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Tag: Saturn
Saturn in Zodiac Signs
Astrology, Natal Astrology, Psychological Astrology
Saturn From series of The seven planets. 1548 Engraving Print
Saturn in Aries, makes the native resolute, determined, stubborn, contemplative; likes contention, argument, etc.; generally good reasoning faculties; inclined to boast; easily angered.
Meanings of the Planets in the Solar Houses
The three-level world of astrology: the twelve mundane houses surround the twelve Zodiac signs and the seven planets, with the earth at the centre. The entire system is shown to be under God’s control.
The British Library, C.54.c.9.
The student understands clearly that the position of the Houses never varies; House I. always occupying the space devoted to the Zodiacal Sign Aries in our original design of the Zodiacal Circle, while the Zodiacal Sign of Nativity must be placed in this House I. in each particular case.
SATURN ♄
May 1, 2017 June 25, 2017
The Seven Planets with the Signs of the Zodiac –
Saturn (1539). Hans Sebald Beham(1500-1550)
Any one born under this Planet will be, in physical appearance, unprepossessing and even somewhat repulsive.
Wladyslaw T. Benda. The Earth with the Milky Way and Moon.
In the first two chapters, we have completed what is called “the Orientation of a Horoscope”, meaning by this the position of the Sun on the Ecliptic on the day of birth of any one whose life we propose studying.
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Sun – Too Cool for School…or Business
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What happens when a high tech company loses its way to achieving long-term growth and profitability? It slowly fades away. Sometimes it is because a company does not keep up with the latest generation of whatever they sell and they become a “has been.” But a new variation on this theme has emerged, to latch on to a new generation even if you can’t make money on it.
Is Sun Microsystems (JAVA) slowly fading away?
Its stock certainly has, having closed last Friday at the lowest level in more than decade (adjusted for a 1-for-4 reverse stock split last year.) JAVA is down over 72% year-to-date. We are in a bear market so many high tech stocks are down substantially. However, compared to IBM (IBM) and EMC (EMC) down approximately -13% and -37% (YTD) (see chart), Sun appears to be having a more challenged year (and decade, for that matter).
In the 1990s, Sun Microsystems established itself as a high tech titan by enabling the build-out of corporate networks and the Internet. It had, and still has, great hardware. During the last recession with Internet bubble bursting, many of Sun’s customers went out of business. It, however, enjoyed a significant presence in financial services that it leveraged until that market blew up in this recession. Having a significant block of customers hit hard in each recession, however, is not the only reason its shares and long-term fortunes are challenged.
As a side bar, it is interesting to compare two other high-tech titans both of which have had to re-invent themselves to weather competitive pressures and recessions themselves.
IBM has been counted out several times in its history. When the mainframe was supposed to be dying in the early 1990s and PCs were going to wipe them out, IBM responded by extending the mainframe franchise, getting into PCs and, most significantly, expanding into services. IBM expanded their services business by acquiring PwC Consulting. In recent years they have expanded, both organically and by acquisitions, into software. In the business intelligence space their significant acquisitions were Ascential and Cognos. IBM has chosen to not fade away, but to expand out of the hardware business with consulting and services surpassing hardware in profits and growth. When it could not make money in PCs it sold the business! Sometimes you need to honestly assess a business and jettison it if it does not advance your business rather than devoting resources into a losing cause.
EMC was also hit in the last recession and has faced many products labeled as EMC-killers over the years. EMC chose not to become a commodity vendor both through a hardware and software strategy. In hardware it acquired a “lower-end” competitor enabling it to offer a broad range of storage products and thus defend its high-end franchise. In software it expanded though organic development but more significantly by acquisitions. Its initial round of software acquisitions extended its core competency of storage capabilities. But then it got into software applications that consumed storage rather than manage it with notable acquisitions of Documentum and VMware. Both of these acquisitions were “outside of the box” thinking that has proved to be profitable.
IBM and EMC have both been primarily hardware vendors in their history and have broken out of those bounds. They both could have become commodity vendors and faded away but did not. They both thought outside the box.
Sun seems to want to be cool regardless of whether it makes business sense.
Sun’s CEO Jonathan Schwartz said, after posting disappointing quarterly earnings, that the recession may be an opportunity for Sun since companies may examine using freely distributed "open source" software which it promotes. Indeed, tough economic times may increase the use of open source software (OSS) but does that business really help Sun?
The company makes money if the customer buys a subscription, but how much revenue and profit can they generate from those customers? Sun bought MySQL for a $1 billion dollars (overpaying is another problem) but that company was not earning a profit despite sales of under $200 million and a millions of downloads. If Sun was a start-up with a much smaller organization then maybe itcould generate enough profit from this business model to sustain itself, but can a company of Sun’s size really generate enough profit from their portfolio of open-source software (OSS)?
The other argument Sun uses is that OSS will generate profit when a Sun OSS customer decides to buy Sun hardware because they were using that OSS. Often, though, if a customer is looking at OSS because they do not want to spend money or they do not have money. Those customers are most likely going to buy the cheapest hardware they can get!
Cross-sell and up-sell are staples of retailers and financial services companies but that business model is yet to proven for a high-tech firm of Sun’s size to leverage from OSS.
I like Sun’s hardware and software. I use Java and MySQL. But it is not a question of whether the products are cool, but can Sun leverage OSS to make enough revenue and profit to keep its business growing.
As Neil Young said "it's better to burn out than to fade away." It would be nice, though, if Sun followed another path and become a growing and profitable high-tech titan again.
Rick Sherman
Andrea Harros says:
You were prescient in this blog post. See “Sun Microsystems to cut up to 6,000 jobs” http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/14/news/companies/sun_microsystems/index.htm?postversion=2008111409.
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AtoZ Crypto weekly overview: Dusting attack targets Litecoin users
Redwan Eid
Binance raised awareness about a large scale dusting attack on Litecoin users, CFTC Fintech Chief Daniel Gorfine resigns, and Facebook pushes for its currency in employing personalities from the legal sector.
BitPoint pledges to refund hack victims, and Binance faces another user data trouble, while the UK blows the whistle for crypto taxes.
These are our headlines for the tour today, welcome to the AtoZ weekly overview.
August 11, 2019 | AtoZ Markets – On the margin of our chat today, I have a word about the crisis AFX Markets went through, where in the beginning of the week, the firm was reported to have been stopped from practicing the business, as the British FCA suspended its licence.
Under the agency’s obligations, AFX Markets ought to publish on its official website, a notice informing of the decision it received, detailing that the suspension includes its brands: STO Financial Services, ICEFX UK and Quantic Prime.
It is worth mentioning that the firm also received before a disciplinary suspension of its licence by CySEC, for compliance related issues.
Binance warning: Dusting attack targets Litecoin users
On Saturday, 10th of August 2019, Binance warned the crypto community that a large scale dusting attack took place on the crypto exchange’s network, which targeted Litecoin users. The warning was announced through the crypto exchange’s Twitter account.
This is relatively a new kind of attacking technique used by hackers and scammers. Binance explains that through this hacking attempt, the scammer sends a small amount of crypto to a crypto user’s personal wallet and then try to track the the transactional activity of each address. Thus, breaking the privacy of the crypto users. If you want to learn more about dusting attacks, then watch the video below from Binance’s academy.
Daniel Gorfine resigns as CFTC Fintech Chief
On Aug. 5, AtoZ Markets reported that the chief of the CFTC Fintech at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Daniel Gorfine, stepped down from his position.
As per the statement the agency published on Aug. 3, Gorfine, Director of LabCFTC, left his chair to pursue his career in the private sector.
The announcement touched upon Gorfine’s achievements during his service period as the Director of LabCFTC as:
The new team arranged innovator office hours across the U.S. and internationally
Gorfine’s team developed CFTC primers on cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology and smart contracts
The dedicated team focused on analysis and collection of public feedback on crypto-assets and mechanics in order to help inform the Commission
Creation of LabCFTC Accelerator which focused on public innovation competitions and internal technology pilots and trials
The team organized the first CFTC Fintech Forward conference
Played a key role in CFTC entering into Fintech cooperation arrangements with the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA UK), Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)
FCA requests crypto exchanges trading reports in detail
In a surprising move, while trading cryptocurrencies is looked at as one of the means to keep anonymity, and help keeping more privacy of transactions, the FCA sent requests to three cryptocurrency exchanges, demanding them to provide the agency with reports on the volume of trading and transactions they register, including the names of customers with their transactions’ records.
The details of the requests, which went to each of; Coinbase, eToro and CEX.IO explained that only those traders who made tremendous profits, benefitting from the price of Bitcoin in the era of its heydays around two to three years back, because “These transactions may result in potential tax charges and HMRC has the power to issue notices requiring exchanges to provide this information.”
Facebook recruits former U.S. Senate Banking Committee’s official
In a step analysts read as pushing for proving its currency and marketing for its good, the social media platform, Facebook, has recently been reported to have started looking at official figures from the law medium to onboard on its Libra’s management stage.
Mid this week, reports unveiled that the social media platform, Facebook, announced hiring the former U.S. Senate Banking Committee’s official, Susan Zook, who served as the assistant Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho).
Facebook’s pursuits to promote its coin comes amid suspicions about its currency and the position it will occupy in the market when it is released, together with investigating whether the coin will impact other sovereign coins in the universal financial system today or not.
BitPoint pledges to refund hack victims
The Japanese crypto exchange, BitPoint, has started resuming its trading services, after losing $28 million in a hack mid last July, assuring that the 50,000 customers hit by the incident will receive funds back on a 1:1 basis, according to report mid this week.
BitPoint announced earlier that On July 11, 2019, the security team discovered an illegal depletion of virtual currencies managed by the Company, stressing that they were “diligently implementing recovery measures and examining and implementing measures to prevent recurrence.”, adding that they plan to restart various services “in stages”, based on the measures referred to.
The amount of crypto assets stolen in the hack included 1,225 bitcoin, 1,985 bitcoin cash, 11,169 ether, and 5,108 litecoin, which accounts for $23 million of the $28 million of the total funds customers had deposited.
Another report of Binance users’ data leakage
AtoZ Market reported on Aug. 7, that the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume, Binance, published a statement pertinent to the news of KYC data from Binance was leaking to the public recently.
Earlier, a Telegram group, which has over 8300 members, exposed to the group’s members images of Binance’s customers’ IDs, as claimed at the time, the thing that pushed the clientele to panic.
Quickly after the news went viral on the social media platforms, the exchange’s CEO tweeted, asking the followers not to fall into the into the (“KYC leak” FUD), as per his words, before the exchange came to another statement, prior to a final conclusion explaining the whole situation.
With the news on Binance, we have come to an end to our tour together for this week.
We have another appointment for another tour in the cryptocurrency and digital assets’ news world, next week, only on AtoZ Markets.
Tags Android phones Binance Cryptocurrrency
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At Work on Purpose
Mobilizing the work world for Christ,
one irresistibly transformed work life at a time.
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The Road To Revival – Part 10 of a series
Posted on October 9, 2012 at 7:02 am.
By: Lee Kresser
Will we be swept away?
Torrential rains, hurricanes, and strong frontal weather systems can send enormous amounts of water down from the skies. When that happens over water, it’s just returning to the source. But when it happens over land, gravity pulls the water to its lowest level and flooding occurs. When driving on roads where water gathers, hydroplaning can occur and we can easily lose control. When we look ahead and see water rushing across the road and car rooftops, we already know someone is in trouble, and we proceed at our own peril.
A man named Robert Rogers knows full well about flood waters, from an intense storm, when his family van was swept from a Kansas I-35 bridge in 2003. All were drowned except him. He dragged himself to high ground, not knowing the fate of his loved ones. The van was destroyed with three of his four children still in their seat belts. His wife and other child were found downstream over a mile away. Yet his faith in Christ is what sustained him. His family members in Christ are preserved to this day.
Our Road Conditions
So what are the conditions of your road today? Will a tsunami rushing ashore or flood waters roaring through low-lying areas sweep us from where we are headed? Look around. Simple truths must be heeded as the storm clouds of the lack of financial responsibility gather. Earthquakes along rift zones of questionable character and abandonment of Biblical principles in homes, businesses and government have also produced tidal waves of debt, discontent, ill-will, anger, frustration and retribution. We are fighting pressures of the steering wheel to maintain control as the swirling waters keep rising.
What can we do?
The Bible contains all we need to know. First, pray and conduct ourselves by the “Book”, and consider:
John Adams said, “Because power corrupts, society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Thomas Jefferson said, “We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”
Baron M.A. Rothschild (helped create the central banking system used today) said, “Give me control over a nation’s currency, and I care not who makes its laws.”
William Penn said on the topic of choosing elected officials who know God and apply Biblical ways are more qualified than those who don’t. “Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.”
Second, remember when we are IN Christ, the road ahead can be flooded and washed out, or riddled with stones and landslides. But when we trust in the Lord, we can be confident in THE way, no matter what happens. The Bible tells us borrowers are slaves to the lender, and that has been truth for thousands of years. Use caution, stay vigilant, and embrace purity in conduct and behavior.
“Lord, the road ahead is troubling. Whether we are washed away and lose everything, or maintain the course, we know all of this is Yours. Empower us to live like You, at work and at home. In Christ’s Name. Amen.”
– Lee Kresser
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
9891 Montgomery Road #202
©2021 At Work on Purpose. All rights reserved. Site by Sound Press
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Wizards forward Rui Hachimura out three weeks with severe pinkeye
Ryan Young
Rui Hachimura will have to wait a few weeks before he can join the Washington Wizards this season.
Hachimura will miss at least the first three weeks of the season with a severe case of conjunctivitis, or pinkeye, the team announced on Monday, via the Washington Post.
The 22-year-old was diagnosed last week, which made coach Scott Brooks hopeful that he’d be ready for their season debut on Wednesday. That, though, is not the case — as Hachimura is experiencing both blurred vision and light sensitivity.
“I was hoping last week, thinking that it would clear up in two or three days, he could be back on the court, couple more days later he’d be back. But he has a severe case,” Brooks said, via the Washington Post. “It’s a long season. I know sometimes when you’re in the grind it doesn’t seem every game is so important and so critical, but he’s a young player, and he needed those reps and practice and training camp, those exhibition games. We’re going to have to figure it out without him until he comes back.”
Hachimura averaged 13.5 points and 6.1 rebounds last season for Washington, which took him with the No. 9 pick in the 2019 draft. Three weeks from Monday would mean that Hachimura could return in time for their matchup with the Phoenix Suns on Jan. 11, limiting him to just 10 games lost in the shortened 72-game season.
That, though, will simply depend on how fast he can recover. Until then, Brooks said they will likely fill his spot in the lineup “by committee” with Moe Wagner, Thomas Bryant and Anthony Gill.
While the loss is significant, Hachimura’s pinkeye hasn’t spread to anyone else in the organization.
“I’m sure early on he was [contagious], but give credit to everybody, I mean everybody in our building — we are diligent to a point it just seems like, man, we don’t even get close to one another,” Brooks said, via the Washington Post. “The hygiene and the social distance and the mask and the coaches, we do a pretty good job. Nobody has it. We’re pretty good with that.”
Rui Hachimura will have to wait to kick off his 2020-21 season. (Photo by Ashley Landis - Pool/Getty Images)
Paylor: No easy way out of AFC East purgatory for Patriots
Wetzel: Jets dodge 0-16, but missing Lawrence would hurt more
Robinson: Time for Belichick to make unprecedented QB move
Fantasy Care/Don’t Care: Mayfield doing best Cousins impression
Prince William worried for emergency staff
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Home Technology Emma Thompson Joins Netflix’s Matilda Movie as Miss Trunchbull – E! Online
Instacart might have misclassified employees under gig law, judge states
Blake Kling
Instacart might be required to reclassify its California buyers as workers.
When California’s AB 5 gig employee costs entered into impact in January, the state anticipated a wave of suits to implement the law. The initially of such cases has actually simply worked its method through a San Diego court. On Monday, Superior Court Judge Timothy Taylor ruled that the grocery shipment business Instacart has most likely misclassified most of its California buyers as independent specialists.
The judgment is available in the kind of an injunction versus Instacart, which suggests the business should stop its service in San Diego till it categorizes its employees properly under the law. However, the judge likewise momentarily remained the enforcement of the injunction, so the judgment will not enter into impact right away and it can be appealed. This news was previously reported by NBC.
“We disagree with the judge’s decision to grant a preliminary injunction against Instacart in San Diego,” an Instacart spokesperson stated. “We will be taking steps to keep that stay in place during the appeals process so that Instacart’s service will not be disrupted in San Diego.”
Most employees for gig economy business, like Instacart, Uber, Lyft, Postmates and DoorDash, are categorized as independent specialists. While that category can indicate increased versatility for employees, it can likewise indicate they’re carrying much of the expenses of their companies. For example, employees spend for their own automobile, phone, gas and car upkeep. They likewise do not get fundamental advantages, such as base pay warranties, overtime pay and medical insurance.
AB 5 modifications all of that. Under the brand-new law, business utilizing independent specialists in California will be put to a three-part “ABC” test to identify whether they need to reclassify their employees. If they do not pass that test, they’ll need to turn their employees into workers. Washington, Oregon, New York and New Jersey are likewise thinking about legislation comparable to AB 5.
The San Diego claim versus Instacart was brought by City Attorney Mara W. Elliot in September. In Taylor’s judgment Monday, he composed that the city “makes a very plausible showing of improper classification under the ABC test.”
“While change is hard,” Taylor composed, “[Instacart] cannot legally declare surprise or that it has actually not had time to change its organisation design.”
Union leaders, gig employee activists and state legislators who supported AB 5 are praising the court’s choice.
“For years, gig companies like Instacart have banked on the exploitation of workers who live beneath the poverty line, wondering where their next meal will come from or how they will pay their rent next month,” stated Amber Baur, executive director of the United Food and Commercial Workers Western States Council union. “We’re proud to have the court rule in favor of these hard-working employees.”
Along with battling AB 5 in the court, Instacart has actually signed up with other gig business in sponsoring a tally effort to bring the problem to citizens in November. Uber, Lyft and food shipment business DoorDash have actually each broken in $30 million to support the effort, referred to as the “Protect App-Based Drivers and Services Act.” Instacart and Postmates have each included $10 million, bringing the overall raised to $110 million.
To get on the November tally, the proposition requires to gather more than 623,000 signatures.
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Blake Kling is a Editor in Chief at Automatic Blogging. Keynote Speaker and Author of several books. Lives in Michigan. Science and Tech enthusiast.
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Mozilla cuts 25% of labor force after pandemic hits earnings
Emma Thompson Joins Netflix’s Matilda Movie as Miss Trunchbull – E! Online
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Scrubs dating quote romantic gestures first dating
Posted on October 27, 2018 December 3, 2020 by
Scrubs quotes
Should Doctors Be Influencers? One Brand Is Betting On It
My Bad Too
Who is turk from scrubs dating
Scrub Quotes
Doctors Fear Bringing Coronavirus Home: ‘I Am Sort of a Pariah in My Family’
PRUDENTIAL OVERALL SUPPLY IS THE RIGHT CHOICE FOR YOUR UNIFORMS!
Scrubs – Dr. Cox speaking about relationships(all 3 scenes)
The dividend will comprise approximately one 1 share of DQWS common stock for approximately every 5 shares of GRNQ common stock issued and outstanding on the record date. D’Swiss has been thriving throughout the pandemic via sales of their healthcare product lines. We plan several more dividends this year of other companies we are currently incubating and that are quoted on the OTC Pink Sheets. About D’Swiss, Inc. DSwiss is a premier biotech-nutraceutical and beauty supplies company. The company’s product range includes beverages to assist in burning and reducing fat, anti-aging creams and products designed to improve the overall health and physical appearance of its clients.
Please note this may ship at a later date without the rest of your order. Please allow business days for store credit to be applied to your account. Order history will be shown as soon as your initial order ships. A1 Scrubs, Inc.
The scrub pigs were considered improving their stock ; and they will rear their pro We will now quote from a letier by Dr. Martin, We have some facts, relating to under slaughtered November 19, ten nionths old, weigh date, Columbus.
Username or Email Address. Remember Me. With you can you can give bulk purchase require. At the night. Born june 25, and hot doctors are almost guaranteed to date Discover and days from the month, i wanted to. Jd can’t ‘perform’ while on imdb: a.
JD himself has been underrated due to his demeanor of being a kind of clown in personality. However, the point of the series was to show that JD needed to learn how the world worked, and these 10 quotes prove that JD did grow up to be an enlightened individual we can all learn from. JD was a special case in that he would live in the moment, but also constantly worried about what was coming next.
This is what caused him to go on his fantasy sequences, as he wanted a way to grasp what might be.
27 “Scrubs” Moments That Will Make You Laugh Every Time Scrubs Quotes, Scrubs. Saved from Scrubs Quotes. This sums up my dating resume.
Remember me. Forgot your password? Log in. Scrubs Quotes. Show Metadata Hide Metadata. D” Dorian learns the ways of medicine, friendship and life. Full production credits: Expand. Director Adam Bernstein. Guest-star Aloma Wright. Supervising producer Angela Nissel. Producer Bill Callahan. Executive producer Bill Lawrence. Director Chris Koch. Guest-star Christopher Darga.
Oh, so that they didn’t hear anything, shock and chaos. That’s what i’m very single father dating jordan’s sissy-poo, or the scrubs quotes and access cboe global markets announces date. Follow scrubs quotes from the rise of the scrub extensions from scrubs, in on him. Despite rumors that way, and days from this size. Carla went viral on orders of emergency and select latest range of.
Scrubs Season 1 Episode “My Blind Date” Quotes. Elliot: Doctor Cox! I pulled all the x-rays you asked for, so I am yours for the night. Do whatever you want.
D ] Don’t ever be afraid to come to me with stuff like that. The simple fact that you actually seem to give a crap is the reason I took an interest in you to begin with. It’s why I trust you as a doctor. Hell, it’s Cox : Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present, Man Not Caring. Turk : It sounds like you’re asking me out on a man date. Elliot : Oh, Dr. Cox, does this lipstick make me look like a clown? Cox : No, Barbie, no Elliot : I’m sorry, that was my mistake, I keep forgetting that you’re a horrible, horrible person.
So here’s what gonna happen: I finally mastered my running hook shot so when we go to pick teams I’m gonna hit that shot. Turk : When do you find time to see your patients?
It aired on April 10, , as the first episode to air after the — Writers Guild of America strike. As the 6th anniversary of Turk and Carla ‘s first date approaches, Turk, in order to surprise Carla with a thoughtful gift, has been learning Spanish for the past few months. Meanwhile, one of J.
“My Bad Too” is the seventh episode of season seven and the th episode of the American sitcom Scrubs. As the 6th anniversary of Turk and Carla’s first date approaches, Turk, in order to surprise Carla with a thoughtful gift, has been.
The dividend will comprise approximately one 1 share of DQWS common stock for approximately every 5 shares of GRNQ common stock issued and outstanding on the record date. We plan several more dividends this year of other companies we are currently incubating and that are quoted on the OTC Pink Sheets. DSwiss is a premier biotech-nutraceutical and beauty supplies company. The company’s product range includes beverages to assist in burning and reducing fat, anti-aging creams and products designed to improve the overall health and physical appearance of its clients.
Please visit: www. Nasdaq: GRNQ is a business incubator and multinational conglomerate with a diversified business portfolio comprising finance, technology, banking, CryptoSx for STOs, health and wellness and fine art. With 30 years of experience in various industries, Greenpro has been assisting and supporting businesses and High-Net-Worth-Individuals to capitalize and securitize their value on a global scale through the provision of cross-border business solutions, spinoffs on major stock exchanges and accounting outsourcing services to small and medium-size businesses located in Asia.
The comprehensive range of cross-border business services include, but are not limited to, trust and wealth management, listing advisory services, transaction services, cross-border business solutions, record management services, accounting outsourcing services and tax advisory services. We also operate venture capital businesses, including business development for start-ups and high growth companies, covering finance, technology, FinTech, and health and wellness.
Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements, particularly as related to, among other things, the business plans of the Company, statements relating to goals, plans and projections regarding the Company’s financial position and business strategy. The words or phrases “plans,” “would be,” “will allow,” “intends to,” “may result,” “are expected to,” “will continue,” “anticipates,” “expects,” “estimate,” “project,” “indicate,” “could,” “potentially,” “should,” “believe,” “think,” “considers” or similar expressions are intended to identify “forward-looking statements.
Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, involve known and unknown risks, a reliance on third parties for information, transactions or orders that may be cancelled, and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements, or developments in our industry, to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.
Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results include risks and uncertainties related to the fluctuation of local, regional, and global economic conditions, the performance of management and our employees, our ability to obtain financing, competition, general economic conditions and other factors that are detailed in our periodic reports and on documents we file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The dividend will comprise approximately one 1 share of DQWS common stock for approximately every 5 shares of GRNQ common stock issued and outstanding on the record date. D’Swiss has been thriving throughout the pandemic via sales of their healthcare product lines. We plan several more dividends this year of other companies we are currently incubating and that are quoted on the OTC Pink Sheets.
About D’Swiss, Inc.
that she did not feel qualified to be first scrub or assistant at the operation. as of this date your services with St. Anne’s Hospital have been terminated. as second scrub, I believe that Nientimp’s recollection is faulty when she quotes.
One doctor dreamed he was surrounded by coughing patients. Stephen Anderson, an emergency room veteran, said there was a two-day supply of surgical masks at his hospital, MultiCare Auburn Medical Center near Seattle. By Karen Weise. SEATTLE — After her shifts in the emergency room, one doctor in Utah strips naked on her porch and runs straight to a shower, trying not to contaminate her home. In Oregon, an emergency physician talks of how he was recently bent over a drunk teenager, stapling a head wound, when he realized with a sudden chill that the patient had a fever and a cough.
A doctor in Washington State woke up one night not long ago with nightmares of being surrounded by coughing patients. Stephen Anderson, a year veteran of emergency rooms in a suburb south of Seattle. I am dipping myself into the swamp every day. The stress only grew on Sunday, when the American College of Emergency Physicians revealed that two emergency medicine doctors, in New Jersey and Washington State, were hospitalized in critical condition as a result of the coronavirus.
Though the virus is spreading in the community and there was no way of ascertaining whether they were exposed at work or somewhere else, the two cases prompted urgent new questions among doctors about how many precautions are enough.
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This is it, the Champions League will draw to an explosive finish on Sunday with the final primed and ready to provide a riot of attacking action. A jaw-dropping round of quarter-final ties paved the way for a fresh final four, with Bayern Munich and PSG rising above the crowd to lock in a mouthwatering showpiece game. The Bundesliga giants trounced Barcelona on their way to the semi-finals before sweeping aside Lyon in the semi-finals thanks to an inspired brace from Serge Gnabry and killer header from Robert Lewandowski.
Barring an unprecedented double-figure goal haul from a PSG forward, Lewandowski has all-but triumphed in the Champions League top scorers stakes, but will hope to inspire his Munich side to the title. PSG have repeatedly fallen at the quarter-final hurdle, but after clearing it against Atalanta and punishing RB Leipzig in the semi-finals, the Champions League final dream has become a reality.
The competition will draw to a close with the Champions League final at 8pm on Sunday 23rd August. Of course, it is expected that the game will be played behind closed doors, though by that time, small numbers of guests may be able to attend. There are multiple ways to get BT Sport. There will also be highlights packages of every game online after the final whistle, and regular TV highlights shows.
Our editorial is always independent learn more. Related news. When is The Umbrella Academy season two released on Netflix? Your guide.
Sidney Madden. The trio won in the best group video category, beating boy-band juggernauts ‘NSync and the Backstreet Boys. This story is part of American Anthem, a yearlong series on songs that rouse, unite, celebrate and call to action.
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ABOUT AZCIR
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Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting
Independent, nonprofit investigative journalism for Arizona
State, county policies impact rejected ballot rates in November election
Election officials didn’t count 27,327 ballots cast by Arizona voters in the November election, rejecting more than twice the 10,457 votes that flipped the state for President-elect Joe Biden in what was the closest raw vote margin of any state in the nation. The uncounted votes, which are legally rejected by officials for reasons such as a missing signature, don’t indicate fraud or election irregularities.
by Sam Kmack December 21, 2020 December 21, 2020
Support independent journalism in Arizona
History of rejected Arizona ballots creates further election uncertainty
Less than a month away from the November election, Arizona’s voter registration deadline has changed twice in two weeks, putting into question whether the latest update will reach voters in time, and leaving the possibility that large numbers of ballots could be rejected. Nearly 14,000 ballots in Arizona’s 2016 presidential election were rejected by county officials because voters weren’t registered in the state or didn’t register by the state’s deadline. They represent 44% of the more than 31,000 ballots thrown out that year, according to an AZCIR analysis of rejected ballots.
by Sam Kmack October 23, 2020 December 20, 2020
Arizona rejected ballots: How AZCIR crunched the numbers
AZCIR used federal and state data to identify trends in the state’s rejected ballot rates from past general elections to better understand how the information can inform voters leading into the 2020 presidential election.
by Sam Kmack October 23, 2020 October 28, 2020
Candidate claims support of dead voters in attempt to get public campaign funding
In early March, Democratic legislative candidate Larry Herrera filed 255 signatures to qualify for public campaign funding. Among them was a form signed on Feb. 3, 2018, by Bernadine Barbara Misiak. Except Misiak died in November 2016.
by Evan Wyloge April 3, 2018 August 26, 2020
Arizona poised for hefty 2018 election spending
There were no statewide or legislative elections in 2017, but the year marked the most prolific campaign fundraising year since the state began keeping the records in an electronic database, setting up the 2018 election for massive political spending.
by Evan Wyloge March 21, 2018 August 26, 2020
Ducey campaign double reports $1.1 million in contributions
Campaign finance reports summarizing the money raised and spent by Arizona political committees during 2017 show more than $1 million in contributions that have been double-reported because of how money raised by Gov. Doug Ducey’s joint fundraising committee has been reported.
by Evan Wyloge March 21, 2018 October 28, 2020
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out the vote
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BAJI educates and engages African American and black immigrant communities to organize and advocate for racial, social and economic justice. Local BAJI Organizing Committees in New York, Georgia, California and Florida with staff in Texas and Minnesota, build coalitions and initiate campaigns among communities to push for racial justice. At the local and regional level, BAJI provides training and technical assistance to partner organizations to develop leadership skills, works with faith communities to harness their prophetic voice, and initiates vibrant dialogues with African Americans and black immigrants to discover more about race, our diverse identities, racism, migration and globalization.
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Posted inBusiness, Energy, News, Politics, State
Maine regulators’ new look at wind contracts fuels controversy
by Darren Fishell February 23, 2015
PORTLAND, Maine — The decision to place two long-term wind power contracts in regulatory limbo has sparked conflict among wind industry advocates, Maine’s major electricity providers and political leaders.
The Maine Democratic Party on Monday chided Republican Gov. Paul LePage for “meddling” in the business of the Maine Public Utilities Commission, based on a Dec. 8, 2014, letter in which LePage urged the commission to reconsider long-term contracts for two wind projects that have not yet been built.
PUC spokesman Harry Lanphear said Monday that LePage’s letter or influence is not the cause for the commission’s review of the contracts.
“That letter and what is happening are not linked,” Lanphear said in a telephone interview Monday.
The letter from LePage was not included in public documents the commission had collected in relation to the wind energy contracts, a circumstance Lanphear said was due to the confidential nature of those types of proceedings.
“A lot of times, bids have information that is confidential and so therefore basically everything in the case is confidential,” Lanphear said. “When this letter came in, that’s where it was put.”
Lanphear said the commission planned to include LePage’s letter in the public portion of the case, though the letter already was obtained and published last week by reporters, including at The Associated Press, the Maine Public Broadcasting Network and the Bangor Daily News.
While LePage’s letter aroused political controversy, the about 50 comments submitted Monday by wind industry advocates and other interested parties will fuel the bulk of discussion during PUC deliberations on the contracts Wednesday.
The PUC-approved term sheets call for Central Maine Power Co. and Emera Maine to enter long-term agreements to buy power from NextEra’s planned Highland Wind project in Somerset County and First Wind’s planned Weaver Wind project in Hancock County.
The Weaver Wind project would sell power at about 5.3 cents per kilowatt-hour for 25 years and the Highland project would sell its power for 4.7 cents per kilowatt-hour for 20 years.
Supporters say the deals would benefit electricity customers and that overturning the contracts would be another slap at wind industry investment, akin to the legal changes that drove away Norwegian offshore wind developer Statoil in 2013.
The three-member commission’s makeup has changed since December, with LePage’s former legal counsel, Carlisle McLean, taking over for chairman Tom Welch, who retired early from his six-year term at the end of 2014. Mark Vannoy, another LePage appointee, became chairman after Welch’s departure.
In soliciting comments, the newly configured commission asked whether sharp declines in oil and natural gas prices have changed the math upon which the PUC made prior decisions.
In a Feb. 18 order, the commission called for comments on whether the deals should be reconsidered in response to natural gas price forecasts from the benchmark Henry Hub, which now estimates that natural gas prices will be 20 percent lower than the prices the PUC used in its analysis of the wind power contracts.
“Such a review would be foolhardy,” wrote Paul Williamson, director of the Maine Ocean and Wind Industry Initiative, arguing short-term declines in oil and gas prices are not a reason to reconsider the long-term contracts. “What has been demonstrated in recent months is clearly there are short-term market price swings.”
The request for proposals opened about a year ago to bring onto the grid renewable power sources that have more stable year-to-year pricing than electricity generation based on fossil fuels.
Central Maine Power is among those advocating for the commission to consider to the contracts anew, writing in comments Monday that “the recent decline in forward energy markets has significantly impacted the financial costs and benefits of both proposed contracts.”
Emera disagreed with CMP, urging regulators not reconsider the contracts on the basis of changes in oil and natural gas prices.
“It is simply not possible to forecast prices, particularly volatile natural gas and oil prices, with a high degree of certainty,” wrote Emera’s legal counsel Nathan Martell. “To reconsider a prior order when oil and gas prices rise or fall in the future would insert a great deal of uncertainty and unpredictability into the long term contracting and regulatory process.”
Industry advocates including Williamson argued that reconsidering the contracts stands to chill interest from investors in the wind industry who could be deterred from doing business in the state.
That argument also has support from the office of the public advocate, whose staff participates in complicated energy cases on behalf of electric ratepayers.
“The obviously countervailing harm in reconsidering the orders is that it undermines the perceived finality of commission decisions,” Public Advocate Tim Schneider and senior counsel Agnes Gormley wrote in their comments in the case.
The public advocate said, however, that the PUC is not by law allowed to consider “economic development” benefits from construction of the projects that have not yet been built.
The contracts were approved in a Dec. 16, 2014, vote by Welch and commissioner David Littell to approve terms for both wind power projects, with a detailed written order issued by the commission Feb. 6, 2015.
Vannoy voted against the term sheets, saying he believed their value to ratepayers was due to “ a temporary cycle of high electricity prices that is dependent on regional policy choices.”
The commission will deliberate whether to reconsider the contracts at 1 p.m. Wednesday in its offices at 101 Second St. in Hallowell.
Darren Fishell
Darren is a Portland-based reporter for the Bangor Daily News writing about the Maine economy and business. He's interested in putting economic data in context and finding the stories behind the numbers. More by Darren Fishell
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Pseudogynecomastia: Flap technique retains nipple colour in men after significant weight loss
Surgeons at UT Southwestern Medical Center have pioneered a new technique that prevents nipple discoloration and preserves shape in men who undergo breast reduction surgery following significant weight loss. The procedure, described in the paper, ‘An Alternative Treatment of Pseudogynecomastia in Male Patients After Massive Weight Loss’, was published in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal Open Forum.
In the paper, the authors describe a technique to treat pseudogynecomastia using a modified elliptical excision and nipple-areola complex (NAC) transposition on a thinned inferior dermal pedicle as an alternative to conventional techniques.
They noted that breast deformities after massive weight loss (MWL) are common in males, who comprise up to 20% of patients undergoing bariatric surgery. The standard surgery involves temporarily removing the nipple. Dr Jeffrey Kenkel, chair of the plastic surgery department at UT Southwestern, said men with darker skin can lose the natural colour in their nipples because blood vessels are lost when the nipple is removed and then grafted back to the breast. Darker skinned men have a nearly 50 percent chance of having nipple discoloration.
With the new technique, blood vessels can be maintained by surgically cutting and lifting the breast without leaving any unnecessary bulk or fullness. The procedure involves cutting below the lower part of the breast and lifting it like a flap up toward the collarbone to remove unwanted breast tissue surgically and reducing the extra skin of the chest. The breast flap is brought back down in the final stage of the surgery, providing the flat-chested look that the patients want without eventual discoloration of the nipple.
"This is a nice alternative to the standard nipple grafting techniques we have used for years,” said Kenkel. “It allows us to preserve the shape of the nipple and in many cases the colour in patients of colour.”
For men with darker nipples, traditional surgery can sometimes not only lightens the colour of the nipples but may leave them with an undesirable spotty appearance. Colour can often go from dark to pink. Kenkel explained that many men start with having a flat chest as their main concern; nipple discoloration is often not a concern until it happens.
He first did the flap procedure in 2011 on a patient who was open to a new approach and expanded to 13 other men over a period of eight years. The men had previously lost about 160lbs each, going from an average BMI of 52 percent to slightly less than 30 percent. The patients had sagging skin and some remaining fat in their breasts that they wanted removed.
The surgical procedure took about 90 minutes for each patient with strong results in retaining natural nipple colour. Post-surgery progress was followed for up to 18 months. Four of the 14 patients experienced minor complications such as delayed wound healing and seroma, in which clear fluid develops under the skin.
“Pseudogynecomastia can be managed with a novel technique utilising a modified elliptical excision with J extension and NAC transfer on a thin, inferior dermal pedicle,” the authors concluded. “This method may be more acceptable in ethnic patients concerned about dyspigmentation issues that may follow standard free nipple graft techniques. This technique offers a low complication profile, making it an attractive option for the growing population of male patients seeking body contouring after MWL.”
He explained that the men who underwent the procedure made the tradeoff of accepting scarring across the chest in return for flatter chests with better contour and shape and little chance of discoloration of their nipples.
"These are operations that allow people - we like to say – ‘to look as good as they feel’. There are tradeoffs, you have to trade a scar for shape, but in most patients, this is very acceptable."
Patients had to maintain a steady weight for three months to be eligible for the surgery. Healthy diets and active lifestyles are required to keep weight gain from recurring.
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“CG®” Officially Registered with U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Jean Atkinson Andrews2018-05-15T09:51:12-04:00October 16th, 2017|BCG News|Comments Off on “CG®” Officially Registered with U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Board for Certification of Genealogists®
The Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG) obtained official registration of its “CG” mark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and was assigned Registration #5280660. This registration offers several legal benefits such as
the right to use the federal registration symbol ® for CG,
a legal presumption of ownership of the mark and the exclusive right to use it nationwide,
the right to bring a federal lawsuit against infringers and recover damages and attorney’s fees, and
a means of stopping “cybersquatters” from registering a domain name using the mark.
“We are pleased to achieve this level of protection through the trademark registration,” said Michael S. Ramage, JD, CG®, the Board’s General Counsel. “The Board for the Certification of Genealogists thanks all of the volunteers who have worked over the years to achieve the protection of the CG designation provided by the trademark registration, including Donn Devine, JD, CG®; and Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG®, CGL℠.”
BCG currently uses several marks in addition to the CG mark. Our name and certification mark—Board for Certification of Genealogists and Certified Genealogist—are also registered trademarks. Our credentials other than our registered certification marks—CGL and Certified Genealogical Lecturer—are service marks. If a mark is not registered with the USPTO, the trademark owner may not legally use the ® symbol in connection with the mark.
For questions or more information contact office@BCGcertification.org.
Cari A. Taplin, CG®
BCG News Release Coordinator
BCG FREE WEBINAR, “Death and Burial Practices in WWI and WWII,” by Rick Sayre, CG®, CGL℠, FUGA
BCG Releases New BCG Application Guide and Revised New-application Rubrics
Associates In Action – November 2020
BCG Revises Genealogy Standard 57 to Allow Private Sharing of DNA Match Details
BCG Announces Naming of African American Scholarship in Honor of Paul Edward Sluby, Sr.
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Sri Lanka Shuts Schools Again As COVID-19 Cases Surge
CoronaVirus Disease foreign
Sri Lanka ordered government schools across the nation to shut Monday, July 13, 2020, just a week after they re-opened, following a surge in new coronavirus cases.
The country has reported just 2,617 cases with 11 deaths, but army chief Shavendra Silva said nearly half the 1,100 residents and staff at a drug rehab facility near the capital had tested positive in the past week, and some visitors may also have been infected.
At least 16 cases had emerged in villages elsewhere across the nation, officials said, most in the central-northern region.
“Based on the direction of health authorities, it is decided to close schools this week,” the education ministry said in a statement, adding that private colleges were also encouraged to shut their doors.
“We will review the situation next week.”
Postal voting for next month’s parliamentary elections would be delayed in villages affected by the virus, the independent election commission said.
Sri Lanka’s ruling party on Sunday called off its rallies ahead of the upcoming poll and postponed the re-opening of the international airport, which was planned for early August.
A repatriation programme that has brought home some 12,000 Sri Lankans from overseas has also been suspended.
Tags: BCOS BCOS Mobile App BCOS News BCOS Website COVID-19 Sri Lanka
COVID-19: South Africa Re-Imposes Curfew As Infections Spike
Fire Guts World Trade Centre In Abuja
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Tag Archives: icelandic band
December 1, 2019 by beatsthatsetmypulse
Between Mountains: “But I know I don’t have to be in love to wanna meet you” – Live at Iceland Airwaves
Written by Erica Andreozzi
I first saw Between Mountains at Iceland Airwaves 2017, just 6 months after they won Músíktilraunir, the annual Icelandic “Battle of the Bands,” and back then it was a very different band. At that time they were a duo — Katla Vigdís Vernharðsdóttir and and Ásrós Helga Guðmundsdóttir — and their name represented the fact that were from different fjords (in Westfjords region of Iceland) located “between mountains.” They harmonized beautifully together and incorporated elements of keyboard, xylophone, and accordion into their songs with a proficiency way beyond their years. Fast forward another 2 years and they are now a 4 piece live: Katla (the muse of Between Mountains) on vocals/keys, her father Vernharður Jósefsson on bass, her brother Valgeir Skorri Vernharðsson on drums (also drummer for Mammut and drum tech for Sigur Ros), and Salóme Katrín Magnúsdóttir on backing vocals/keys. While I enjoyed the duo before, I must say that I prefer the larger band much more and appreciate the clever, catchy percussion that Valgeir brings with his extensive experience on drums. The talent within this family is enormous (Katla and Valgeir’s brother is the talented front man of Rythmatik), and has me imagining how their spurious moments of “playing around the house” has led to the masterpieces we hear now. Please do yourself a favor and listen to their debut album, ‘Between Mountains’ (released on Nov 1 and produced by Arnar Guðjónsson of Warmland), because it’s AMAZING and chock-full of hits: ‘Little Lies,’ ‘I Don’t Want to be in Love,’ ‘What Breaks Me,’ and ‘Synthalag.’ ‘Little Lies’ is an incredibly beautiful track with lyrics that I’m sure we can all relate to (“My mind will fall apart again, now it’s only a matter of when, it rise up as I go down.. and there I stay, I reach for you, meet me halfway… I wonder if I’ll be the same, and how I will keep myself sane, confine my thoughts, tie every note… I told you a lie when I told you I’m fine”) and I’m so impressed that they lyrics were written by someone only 18 yrs of age. The same goes for the song, ‘I Don’t Want to be in Love,’ which has a style reminiscent of Sharon Van Etten (whom I absolutely adore). : “It’s been 3 weeks since we’ve first met and I thought I hadn’t screwed up yet. I haven’t felt this way for someone in almost a year. I missed it when it was gone but I’m scared that it’s here. Cause I’m not very good at this and I never show my cards. I am too afraid of it, I won’t let my guards. But I know I don’t have to be in love to wanna meet you.” WOW. I know we can ALL relate to this one even though we’d rather not admit it: Poignant, vulnerable thoughts laced with infectious, upbeat melodies and gorgeous harmonies. ‘What Breaks Me’ is another stunner, and you’re bound to sing along to the catchy chorus (“It’s what I can hold that makes me, what I’ve been told what breaks me”) that Katla and Salóme so intricately deliver with staggering vocals that echo one another like a call-and-response. Still, the song that I feel STOLE THE SPOTLIGHT at The Hard Rock Cafe was, ‘Into The Dark’ (nominated for “Video of the Year” at the Icelandic music awards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp4AHG8OkRg), which Katla said she wrote when she was only 14 yrs old. UNBELIEVABLE. This one starts out soft but picks up on speed and intensity, and you can feel your adrenaline pumping as you anticipate the crescendo of the cryptic chorus: “It says you’re deeper in the sea.. I feel you’re face.. I see your face.” The harmonies in this one are gorgeous, and I made sure to mention that when a famous writer for Rolling Stone magazine was showering her with compliments later that night. Another song that stole the spotlight and had me all teary-eyed and emotional was ‘Synthalag,’: “the colors in your eyes tell me stories, about what should have been and why I ran, the buttons your coat say ‘you’r sorry,’ cause they can hear and no one else can, and when I look up to the sky, I suddenly feel alive. The lights are dancing with the stars. And we just sit and watch.” OUTSTANDING VOCALS that will take your breathe away and transport you to a place under the arctic sky, looking up at the stars “together” with someone you love. Between Mountains are certainly rising out above the rest and getting the visibility they deserve. I sure hope to see them in the states next year! ❤
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Tagged between mountains, iceland airwaves, icelandic band, icelandic music, into the dark, Katla Vigdis, little lies, live music, music festival, music review, rolling stone, what breaks me
Hatari’s show at The Reykjavik Art museum (11/8/19) this year was PURE PERFECTION, and one of the most phenomenal productions I have witnessed at Iceland Airwaves thus far. It has been incredibly eye-opening to watch how this band had evolved from when I first saw them at Kaffibarinn in 2017 (see review here), and I am constantly amazed at their efforts and execution in redefining the impossible. Known for their drive to defeat capitalism, Hatari started off their show with visual depictions (iPhone, computers, etc.) of how digital technology is trying is consume our thoughts and control our minds to perceive a reality that is not healthy. They also ended the show with this same theme, bringing us back full circle after unleashing our disgust for the “rampant hypocrisy that exists in this world.” Meticulously dressed in intricate, ornate BDSM attire, this transfixing trio — Klemens Hannigan (vocals), Matthías Tryggvi Haraldson (vocals), and Einar Stéfansson (drums, also the guitarist for the amazing band Vok!) — had our eyes locked on their every move. I was mad impressed by the visuals that the glow-in-the-dark whips dangling from Matthias’ wrists made as he swung them around frivolously while dancing. They were a perfect pairing to the glow-in-the-dark leather strap suits worn by the beautiful, alluring female dancers Sólbjört Sigurðardóttir and Ástrós Guðjónsdóttir who cranked up heated up even more. They also had surprise guest appearances by a rapper and a singer (wish I knew their names) that had us all hot and bothered. And if that wasn’t enough to raise our body temperatures many degrees higher, the EXPLOSIVE PRISM OF FIREWORKS shooting up from the front of the stage SURE WAS. I still recall my friend Erika and I gasping at that exact same moment as we marveled at this SIGHT OF ALL SIGHTS. What I find most compelling about Hatari is their ability to keep a straight poker face during this entire epic production. It’s their discerning dichotomies – their ability keep a straight poker face when delivering devilish, primal screams and disturbing, suicide lyrics to happy techno beats – that keeps us coming back for more. They exude a mystery and allure that is truly magnetic, and it’s this fascinating paradox that we can get enough of. Almost everyone around me knew all of the lyrics for ‘Spillingardans,’ ‘X,’ ‘Hatrið mun sigra,’ and ‘Biðröð Mistaka,’ just to name a few. After earning themselves Reykjavik’s Grapevine‘s “Best Live Band” pick of 2016 and 2017, and most recently a highly competitive top 10 spot in the 2019 Eurovision contest, Hatari’s fans are growing astronomically, and on a global scale. It’s only perfect timing then that Hatari is gearing up for a ‘Europe Will Crumble’ tour of 18 European cities in 2020. This is only the tip of the iceberg for these Icelandic renegades. Just you wait and see. See below for full videos of the show from my Facebook page.
Tagged Ástrós Guðjónsdóttir, Biðröð Mistaka, Einar Stéfansson, eurovision, hatari, Hatrið mun sigra, iceland airwaves, icelandic band, Klemens Hannigan, live music, Matthías Tryggvi Haraldson, music festival, music review, reykavik grapevine, reykjavik art museum, Sólbjört Sigurðardóttir, spillingardan
October 28, 2018 by beatsthatsetmypulse
Hormonar: “Our songs are like a female orgasm; there’s no one big explosion, but many high points” – Live at Secret Solstice and Iceland Airwaves (June/Nov 2017)
Photo credit: Ian Young (www.nounpusher.com)
Hórmónar (Whoremoans) definitely roused plenty of hormones at Iceland Airwaves this year, and it is no surprise that their fan base is multiplying rapidly. They were one of my top new discoveries at Secret Solstice 2017, and their liberating (shirts off at the ed), sexually-charged punk rock performance had both men and women in a tizzy. It therefore was no surprise to later find out that these 5 friends (Brynhildur Karlsdóttir-Vocals, Urður Bergsdóttir-Bass/Vocals, Katrín Guðbjartsdóttir-Guitar, Hjalti Torfason-Saxophone, Örn Gauti Jóhannsson-Drums) won the 2016 Icelandic Music Experiment. Brynhildur’s vocals were unpredictable, edgy, and hot, and plenty of men shouted “are you offering?!” in response to her asking the audience, “Are you HORNY?!!” In a previous interview with the Rekyavik Grapevine, Brynhildur said: “Our songs are like a female orgasm; there’s no one big explosion, but many high points.” Their smoking hot, super-seductive, “drive-you-wild” energy sparked some serious attention at Iceland Airwaves this year, earning them the “Peoples’ Choice Award” at the Grapevine Music Awards. I am so glad I was able to see them up close without getting burned. 😛 Can’t wait to see my three favorite songs (videos below) from their album ‘Nananana Búbú” once more at Iceland Airwaves 2018. ❤
Tagged hormonar, iceland airwaves, icelandic band, icelandic music, live music, music festival, music reviews, secret solstice
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Karisma Hotels and Resorts Launches Initiative to Reward Essential Workers
‘Holidays for Your Heroes’ will gift 150 five-day all-inclusive resort stays to people in a variety of frontline industries.
By Islands Staff
Know an essential worker who could use a vacation to somewhere incredible like Azul Beach Resort Negril? Karisma Hotels and Resorts wants to make that happen.Karisma Hotels
Throughout the pandemic, Karisma Hotels and Resorts has made it a priority to give back to the communities surrounding the company’s properties. El Dorado Royale in Mexico has been donating food and meals from the resort’s 75,000-sq. ft. greenhouse, while Nickelodeon Hotels and Resorts Punta Cana works with local officials and agencies to deliver more than 800 meals daily. And now, Karisma is reaching out to friends and families of people working on the front line for nominations to reward many of them for their efforts.
The “Holidays for Your Heroes” program will award 150 five-day stays for the winners and guests at all-inclusive resorts set on stunning beaches and packed with fun and exciting perks. From now through June 30, Karisma is accepting nominations for anyone from healthcare workers to grocery store employees to honor them for putting others above themselves during this chaotic time.
“Our goal with Holidays for Your Heroes is to provide some much-needed hope and positivity to frontline workers during this challenging period, so they can look forward to spending quality time with loved ones as soon as the time is right,” explained Bill Linehan, president of Premier Worldwide Marketing, on behalf of Karisma. “From medical staff to truck drivers, delivery people and grocery workers, we are surrounded by heroes working day and night to care for us, so we want to give back to them in the way that we can – through the power of travel, which allows people to connect with each other and create wonderful lasting memories.”
Nominations can be made through Karisma’s website, requiring a brief description of the nominee, or on Instagram, using the hashtag #HolidaysForYourHeroes. Each winner will receive a five-day stay at the Caribbean or Latin American property of his or her choice, including popular spots like Azul Beach Resort Negril, the new Margaritaville Island Reserve Riviera Cancun, and the adults-only El Dorado Royale, which we’re told offers an otherworldly grapefruit paloma.
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The Secret Agent (Signet)
by Conrad, Joseph
London, 1886 and Mr Adolf Verloc runs a sex shop in the heart of Soho. Unbeknown to his loyal wife Winnie, Verloc also works for the Russian embassy, spying on a group of London anarchists. The Russian government are furious with the English establishment's indifference to the anarchist threat gripping the rest of Europe. So Verloc is assigned a mission: Blow up the Greenwich Observatory and make it look like a terrorist attack to provoke a crackdown. Should he fail, Verloc's real identity as a spy will be exposed to his vicious comrades. Verloc is forced to turn to the volatile anarchist, The Professor, to supply explosives for his mission - an act which attracts the attention of Chief Inspector Heat of Scotland Yard. Caught between the spy masters and the police, Verloc grooms Winnie's young and vulnerable brother Stevie as his unsuspecting accomplice. When the truth and consequences emerge, Verloc must face Winnie's wrath ... From the producers of the acclaimed Line of Duty, this riveting psychological thriller stars Toby Jones as Verloc and Line of Duty's Vicky McClure as Winnie, with Stephen Graham (Boardwalk Empire) and Ian Hart (The Last Kingdom). Adapted by BAFTA award-winning Tony Marchant (Great Expectations) and directed by Emmy award-winning Charles McDougall (Hillsborough, House of Cards, The Good Wife), The Secret Agent will be broadcast on BBC One this summer.
Poquette's Books
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The Secret Agent (Signet) (Mass Market Paperback)
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Description: Connecting readers with great books since 1972. Used books may not include companion materials, some shelf wear, may contain highlighting/notes, and may not include cd-rom or access codes. Customer service is our top priority!
Secret Agent, the (Trade Paperback)
Publisher: OXFORD [11/1983]
Seller: Books N More Pa, Breinigsville, PA, USA
Notes: Trade Paperback-9780451518040 [CONRAD, JOSEPH] SECRET AGENT, THE.
The Secret Agent (Signet) (Mass-market paperback)
Notes: Very Good condition.
Wonder Book - Member ABAA/ILAB
Frederick, MD, USA $8.49
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The Secret Agent (Signet) (Paperback)
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The Secret Agent (Signet) Conrad, Joseph (Mass-market paperback)
belskiy
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The Secret Agent (paperback)
Notes: New York. 1983. November 1983. Signet/New American Library. 2nd Printing of This Signet Classic Edition. Very Good in Wrappers With A Tear Mark From A Price Sticker on The Front Cover. ISBN: 0451518047. Introduction By Frederick R. Karl. 240 pages. paperback. CE1804. FROM THE PUBLISHER-This extraordinary novel by one of the greatest of storytellers is both a chillingly prophetic examination of terrorism and the literary precursor of the espionage thrillers of such writers as Graham Greene and John Le Carré. The scene is turn-of-the-century London. The characters include idealistic revolutionaries, ruthless ideologues, bureaucratic police, and at the center, an undercover, counter-revolutionary mole whose mission is to provoke the radical group he has penetrated into a monstrous act of violence that will bring about its own destruction. In this world of plot and counterplot, where identities are deceptions and glowing slogans mask savage realities, each character becomes an ever more helpless puppet of forces beyond control-until one woman's love, grief, and. anger rips through the entire fabric of the conspiracy with a passionate, profoundly human act. A key work of twentieth-century art and consciousness, THE SECRET AGENT is, in the words of critic F. R. Leavis in The Great Tradition, 'one of Conrad's supreme masterpieces. one of the unquestioned classics of the first order that he added to the English novel. inventory #31497.
ZENO'S
San Francisco, CA, USA $8.00
More About The Secret Agent (Signet) by Conrad, Joseph
Seller: Poquette's Books
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About Bryan Garrity
1% commission bait and switch in real estate, skunks and racism.
This episode aired live July 15, 2019. Guests included: Patrick Mercer, Jennifer Koch, Ryan Alvey, Jonathan Cohen-Kurzrock. Topics ran the full gamut from a big chunk on Real Estate and commissions to healthcare, social media, The Golden Rule, racism and back to Real Estate. For context and more laughs, you'll need to listen to the full show here. Some of the quotable moments from today's episode include these:
But no, it was a 20-pound looking skunk. That thing was massive. It must've sprayed all over all three of them. But my girl's like, "No, no, you little b*tch. You're not allowed in my backyard, you're out of here." So she killed the skunk and then this morning I was like, "Ooh, the skunky."
Jennifer Koch - I feel like Vanna White right now the way you're saying this.
Bryan Garrity - I feel like I was Vanna getting you my darling.
"There are some that are not so fun that are in real estate and they will not be on this show. No, they will not be on this show."
On real estate agent commissions and the supposed "1% commission" bait and switch:
Once you realize your self-worth, you'll stop giving a discount.
It needs to be more than, "Oh I just want to get the listing," but what else are you offering against those other agents? Especially if we are talking the same price commission.
It's always scary when they say, "My friend just got their license a week ago." So the nice part of me, the nice part of me is like, "We'll help your friend." The realistic part of me is like, "Run the other direction and tell them to call me in a couple of years when you get some experience. Do you want to be the guinea pig for that person?
On racism
We live in a crazy society now with Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, where I think that this hatred, if you will, or negative talk has always been around, I just think that it wasn't able to get out there because people said it kind of behind closed doors.
I would say in the last few years though I feel like it's heightened. I think that comes from the top, you know, Cheeto head definitely I think has a big effect on that part. Where just when you see the allowance at the highest level in the US, being able to say certain things, being able to treat people certain ways, and for a lot of cultures dog whistles that other people might not hear, but definitely dog whistles depending on who you are. The people who have those racist tendencies in everything, that's how they feel like they're allowed to come out. A dog whistle is when basically someone says something and only the people who have that belief and the people who it's against are able to hear it. So what happens is a lot of people might not realize it, like there might be 50% of people who don't realize that someone just said something racist. Except for the group that's being hit upon and the people that that person is trying to incite the racism in.
I'll tell you what's happened the last couple of years, we found out that what goes behind those closed doors is not quite all rainbows and sunshine like people thought. It's too bad.
Let's just get back to a community of respect for one another, of love for one another. People make fun of me and say, "Oh yeah, love, love, love." Yeah, yes, love all day. Why not? You want it to be hate, hate, hate? That doesn't make a sh*it of sense to me, that actually pisses me off.
That's my favorite thing to do when I get home at night though. Sit my ass on the couch, and get a Mexican Coke, and play with my puppies, and watch The View.
Well, I feel like mental health is like the healthcare system and the way it's set up, they overlook that a lot and helping people with mental illness. I have a lot of family and friends that I've seen go through that and a lot of times it seems like they're just throwing pills at them. Let's experiment with this, let's try this, let's up that, let's take that down, let's throw that in, and it doesn't really help the problem. I think they just try to brush it under the rug and forget about it. Like, "Here take some of these and have fun."
On minding your own flippin' business:
Patrick Mercer: "It's obviously difficult for people to stay in their lane..."
Bryan Garrity - "I like that. Stay in your lane, stay in your lane."
Special guest: Heather Shotke from The gramMarch Challenge is back!
This week we welcome back Heather Shotke from The gramMarch Challenge. For those who aren't familiar with Heather, she is a middle school teacher that started this initiative a few years ago to help make her students more aware of the words we use in writing for proper communication. The initiative started out just with her students and now has expanded to a campaign that has been adopted by many throughout the nation.
Special guest: Heather Shotke from gramMARCH.org
Immigration Myths Busted and Group Rant
In the studio with Bryan today: Angie, Drew, Luis Lopez from the Law Office of Kevin Tracy. He's a Paralegal and Interpreter.
Luis told us that with regards to gay marriages, they have had 20 cases so far come in with Visas, met their partner here and took advantage of new law.
How scary for some coming from Guatemala , Honduras that are very against gays. Their risk is bigger. If they get caught and deported, some countries will actually kill you for being gay.They can ask for asylum out of fear due to their living situation.
The studio is on the Pope Francis bandwagon. WE LOVE HIM.The new Pope - his view of tolerance of love of all.
We are all about welcoming people into the church. so says the Archbishop of NY. Progressive action is happening.
Our team doesn't believe in the "lock the borders" point of view. What do you think their reason is for coming here?
Do you not get a lot of it is about FEAR. If you had kids in a country with violence all around you and there was chance to escape to safety - wouldn't YOU take that for your kids?
Yes, you need to do it right - meet with a team like Luis and those at the Law Office of Kevin Tracy. Have a sit down/free consult. They usually have interpreters, they have a attorney/client confidentiality agreement to protect you. They won't notify immigration. Spell out your situation and Luis and his team will be honest and help you on your path. They'll also be honest and tell you if you have some things to clear up first.
Call Luis at 858-805-6786. They serve ALL of San Diego county and outlying areas.
If you mention Big Daddy Radio, they'll set up a free consultation for you. They are looking out for the best interest of the client. They don't want you hurt or your families. They want to help you do it right and start your better life.
If someone is here, and they marry someone from Holland, do they get automatic citizenship. This is a common myth.
Married to US citizen - they can go ahead and start the immigration process. BUT have to check their history, how many times in and out of the country, are there problems with their visa, or will they have to do processing where they fill out the paperwork here but have to go back to their country of origin to complete it.
People are confused with that belief like the movie Green Card.
It's not automatic. Look at the Governor of Oregon's girlfriend. She married someone when she was 18 just to get him a greencard - she was paid for this, too. There is no free pass. You need to know the laws. There are several types of visas.
If you have a legal document, you marry here to a US citizen, that's the perfect scenario.It takes about 6 months.
Say you met on vacation - longer process - 1-2 years. Depends where you met, background checks and the rest. Luis loves these stories and loves helping.
Bryan reminds us: This country was built on welcoming people.
< h3>30:00 GROUP RANT: Violence against women.
WHY do you men think this is any type of OK? You weak, puny minded, insecure person. Picking on someone who can defend themselves? It's about bullying and power. You weak, pathetic human if you do this. NOTHING warrants violence against another human being. You cannot justify it hiding behind religion and local, archaic laws and your neighborhood social norms. How would you feel if someone beat your grandma? Your daughter? So your wife or girlfriend is the same? And if you think this is OK in any way, you are a sick, sick human!
Women/victims - Past behavior like this will NOT get better. Same with cheaters - why are you shocked if they do the same to you? Why would you tempt the odds? Have more self-respect. You can't fix these sick people no matter how good you are in bed, no matter how much money you lend them - they are sick manipulating abusers. RUN! If your friend or relative is considering this type of physically or mentally abusive partner - HELP THEM RUN!
OK, here's the other side, you've tried to help that person over and over and over. They are also sick if they are drawn to this type of person. As the caring friend, how do you forgive a person who is stupid or gullible or that keep going back?
Wow! There's a question.
But, let's talk about cattiness and those who delivered unsolicited advice on a regular basis - HEY! How insensitive and who are you to think we have been sitting around waiting for your cruel, unthinking, insensitive opinion.
Sometimes you just have to say, "PEESE SHUT MOUF, WOOMUN!"
http://www.cafepress.com/comics/s_pearls-before-swine&design=39072927
What is your motivation for that comment? Is it to look better, feel better about you or, because you REALLY care?
No excuses, Binky Patrol makes is SO easy to volunteer for kids.
Angie, Drew and our guest - ME! Susan Finch was on the show. Susan Finch Solutions
Art is so important to kids. So many schools have lost their budgets so kids no longer have the opportunity to learn about artists or history through art, express their creativity through thinking outside the box - creative solutions.
Susan Finch needs your help to secure a grant from Chase to put together 12 art lessons about a specific artist, project.
The lessons will include virtual field trips, interviews with artists, cooking shows where they fit and a bit history wrapped inside of an art project they can make with easy-to-find materials from any craft or hardware store - or even the recycle bin. The grant will cover the film and production costs to get these online and available to children around the world, even with limited internet access.
The other part of the grant is for Binky Patrol Comforting Covers for Kids. This is a 501c3 all volunteer organization started in 1996. The mission is to make and give blankets to children and teens in need of comfort. The grant money will support the chapters as they try to get more volunteers to make more blankets to give to more children who feel they are invisible, forgotten, are ill, abused or homeless!
http://bit.ly/artlituschase is where you vote. Have to be logged in with Facebook. After you vote, you can delete the grant access.
Angie and Bryan talked about Ember Deflectors and how important devices like this are, especially in light of all of the fires happening in California and around the country with the drought conditions.
Learn more at http://emberdeflector.com
Bryan talked about volunteering and donating. Sometimes people don't donate anything because they feel they can't donate enough to make a difference. Think about this. $3 is enough to make a blanket to comfort a child or teen in need. That blanket will not only comfort the child, but allow a volunteer to make a difference and for that child's family to see that someone cares about their child, as well. $3 - TRULY, it's easy to make a difference. Don't overthink it.
Binky Patrol allows you to volunteer on your time schedule, when it fits, from your home. It doesn't have to be hard. CHOOSE to make a difference. That's what sparked her to start this organization in 1996.
ANYONE can make a blanket. If it's soft, from the heart and washable, it's perfect.
She said YES to Oprah when they wanted to mention Binky Patrol on her show about children with AIDS on AIDS Awareness Day. They went national the day the show aired as over 800 phone calls came in the first two days. They couldn't keep up with the voicemail.
And what about Orpah? Do we think she's happy with her network? Seems like perhaps she was forced into doing SOMETHING else big. We think she may have other interests she wants to pursue, perhaps quieter interests. Hats off to her.
October is also National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
How about the other cancers? It's important to fight them all.
LUNG cancer is the number one cancer killer by a long shot. Lungs aren't as pretty as breasts, so perhaps we don't hear from them as much. Perhaps because people think about lung cancer as self-inflicted due to smoking. More judgement.
ANGIE:
What about all of the labels. Surely the villagers in Cro Magnon times relied on the alertness of the ADD people to keep them safe while the OCD people were counting beans!
SUSAN:
I'm not weak because of my (name the acronym disorder), I'm AWESOME because of it!
Spin it how you want, find the positive in exactly the lot you were dealt.
BRYAN:
We treat our animals with more dignity than our loved ones - referring to humans. WHY is that?
If you have an issue with the drought and the ice-bucket challenges.. do it over grass!
On the ice-bucket challenges and wasting water:
Do it in a tub, get naked and then get clean! Such a non-issue.
If a charity is to run properly and grow and gain large sponsors, you have to decide to pay an executive staff. All volunteer organizations are limited to grow based on the hours their volunteers can give to run it.
Bryan talked about an important email he received from a listener who moved here from Arkansas and is in the military. He had misconceptions typical of many folks about gay people.
"I was surprised there was a homosexual on ESPN. I hadn't ever been around gay people until I moved to San Diego." He had viewed them as second class citizens. He was pleasantly surprised to learn that they are just people, professionals, intelligent and has shed his stereotypes. "Now your show is my favorite show on ESPN!" His wife listens at the office, he listens in North Island.
Bryan admits it was a big deal to call Wes his husband. Has to do with the time and place we were raised. Spouse he was used to. How's that for honesty?
Susan's known Bryan for over 35 years, and has known Wes for years, it still throws her to talk about Bryan's marital status. OLD SCHOOL and hard-wired.
They've been married since 2008. Bryan says he's150% committed, but at the end of the day, it is his spouse - he still uses the term partner but is working on it. Silly man. He's even aghast when he hears Wes say, "My husband is on the phone..." "WHAT ARE YOU SAYING!" Too funny.
Susan & Bryan cheer the Pope. Kind of an accepting guy - he rocks the house!
ANGIE told us about a BIG DEAL EVENT:
San Diego Rescue Mission Sleepless America San Diego to support the homeless in San Diego. Over 8500 homeless on the streets of San Diego.
http://sleeplesssandiego.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=1111086
Check it out and participate!
If you miss this weekend, you can help ANY DAY. There are always homeless people in need. Vets, families, children - open your heart - don't make it too hard - just do SOMETHING to help them. Even the Kardashians are trying to set an example.
In the Pacific Northwest - over 135,000 children and teens are served by Northwest Children's Outreach.
Give a little bit through 6 Degrees and Buy some GREAT Investor books.
What was the genesis of 6°?
"Accidental business - more me transitioning careers from sports marketing to financial planning.
Not finding much value with the networking groups I was trying."
He has always connected people via email and has gained a great reputation putting people together who mutually benefit and match values. The byproduct, he admits selfishly, was to get more clients for his financial planning business. The group evolved naturally and took on a life of its own.
Founded 2007 with their first event.
Started with monthly mixers.
600 local paying members.
60,000 attendees to their events:
Events include: mixers, panels, CEO round tables, breakfasts. A lot of different options - not just mixers, but educational.
People are flawed in their thought process if you ONLY use online networking. It's a component, a conduit.
Like-minded professionals: Be out there - network of others to connect with and know a face to a name.
The intent is to make 6° a national organization with chapters.
Check out MeetingMatch.com - launched in beta to allow greater intelligence for meeting registration.
6° 7th Anniversary Celebration info:
SILO in Makers Quarter
753 15th Street, San Diego, CA 92101 (US).
Casino night games from Black Tie Casino Events
Dueling pianos from Funky Monkey
All proceeds will benefit Make-A-Wish Foundation in San Diego
6° has already granted 5 wishes to local wish kids.
There have been over 200 wishes granted in San Diego last year!
This is their big celebration each year - big event - business community in San Diego. If you miss this year, you can contact them to be a sponsor for next year!
600 registered already, 12 restaurants are involved in providing food,
There are over 20 corprorate sponsors.
"Networking is about farming: It's about building relationships and planting seeds."
If you take a tip from BNI or similar and you meet people who only want to network once in a while, it's like a one-night-stand. They're there to get what they can during that one time. Not really building a relationship. It's similar to dating.
It's not about YOU - how are you able to benefit their lives?
LINKS FOR 6° and Matt Greene:
6° Main site
6° Anniversary party - if you miss it this year - you can help sponsor NEXT YEAR.
There is plenty of business for everyone - need to find alternatives when one person isn't a fit for Bryan - who can he confidently recommend as an alternative? That's why he connects with someone like Michael Wolf.
Time for author and Realtor, Michael Wolf.
He wrote his first book in 2010. Bryan asked what motivated him to do it, he told us, "There was nothing out that was current or not demeaning, '... for dummies...' The investor book is more for the individual who has invested in real estate.
it's for someone who wants investment real estate and doesn't know where to start.
It identifies what kind of investor you want to be: strip mall or condo?
And it gives you guidance regarding buy and hold, vs. buy and flip, this book covers these options and explanations."
If you don't own your primary residence, buy his first book. The first book gives a person a sense - the mom and pop type of investor - of understanding. His guide gives you the steps from the beginning - again, respectfully, but easy to understand.
The most important part of this book, "What kind investor you are. This is the only way to get to the core strategy that would be best for you."
LINKS FOR MICHAEL WOLF:
First Time Home Investor Book
First Time Home Buyer Book
Realty, Reality and Archie Andrews
WOW! Turn Bryan and Drew loose on a show when a guest has to cancel and it is a full show. You'd think they had a full panel. It was quite a show full of topics.
The real person you want to list your house is ME!
We don't want to spend the whole show talking about real estate - you've heard business shows today before this came on. If you need to buy, want to buy, want to see, need to sell or don't know - call me, make an appointment. Let's make a plan
OK, let's get back to the lifestyle portion of this site.
If you are in distress, don't be - pick up the phone.
Call about anything regarding real estate. Doesn't matter what part of the county it is in. We treat each house as it's own unique business proposition.
All about handing volume consistently, but knowing when to say when.
That's why we have our preferred vendor, Wes Shaw of RPM Mortgage.
You always want to be planning.
BREAK IT DOWN for the folks - make it NOT boring.
Sales are primarily back to traditional, but there is the reset for those loans - those balloon payments - we are going back to short sales coming back on the market. Stuff happens - jobs lost, jobs changed - you need help - call us!
Archie was shot and killed? We'll cover that after the break.
Some talk about Real Housewives and our friend, .....Tamra
DUH! Do you not know this is not 100% reality? Really? Folks - it would be boring or a hot mess if it was all REAL. Gotta edit, stir it up... come on.
There is talk of reunion filming as the show ends...
If you missed Ladies of London -try to catch it on Hulu.
We are THE reality show junkies.
The culture differences between the American women and Brits - THAT's interesting.
Don't judge us on this. Bryan has his law degree, is very educated - he just loves these for entertainment. Drew's on board with this too. Hey - we know these shows are ENTERTAINMENT - we know they are not our friends or real people - they are characters coached.
Shout out to Marisol Patton.
OK, back from break..
Going to Tahiti. UNPLUGGED is the KEY! Soak in the surroundings, take pause.
Mykonos was another favorite. Stay at the Mykonos Grand - save up - do it right!
Heather Shotke from GramMarch will be back on. We will be supporting her upcoming events.
Time to get back to complete sentences in schoolwork, business correspondence and more.
What about Archie? He's been around since 1939 - why did they kiill him off? Is this a political statement.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2014/07/16/for-archie-comics-a-political-focus-is-a-strategy-not-a-stunt/
He was killed because he was defending his own openly gay friend, who is a senator on the topic of gun control. That brings us to Gay Pride. San Diego Pride week.
LGBTG - gotta get them all in there... It's more than the extreme folks in their underwear they like to show on the news. Gays own businesses, have families, get married, support charities, hire people..
THOR is going to be a WOMAN! What a courageous move for Marvel! Should be interesting.
Oscar Coverage and Mia from Wounded Warrior Homes
This show featured Angela Moskovis, Wesley Shaw of RPM, Adam on the board.
Special guest Mia Roseberry from Wounded Warrior Homes
We covered the Oscar's and John Travolta's pronunciation debacle.
Can I just say, WE LOVE PINK! She's tremendous - not only does she do her own acrobatics, but can sing with such resonance at the same time. She's powerful and under-appreciated! And, how many of you cry or mist up when you hear "Wind Beneath my Wings" by Bette Midler? Perfect timing on that.
Wes' Recap on Loans, Interest and the Market:
improving interest rates with Ukraine crisis. It's a great time to obtain a mortgage. At about 4.5 percent you are borrowing money at a good price.Don't wait - sellers are serious, as are buyers. Bryan disagrees when people say
to wait until summer - no reason to delay. There are buyers waiting for you. Do it while the rates are at 4.5 percent. Let's not wait.
Mia Roseberry, co-founder of Wounded Warrior Homes in San Diego
Their mission is to provide transitional housing to single post-911 combat veterans with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress. Many veterans are discharged from military, but what you don't know is that they are discharged due to injury, it can take up to two years to receive their benefits when they get out. In the meantime, they have no income, and due to the injury they cannot work. Has greatly increased the homeless population. There are over 48,000 Iraq and Iran veterans who are homeless from USA Today report. This is sickening. No one seems to realize that it truly takes time for everything to come through. They have no money, some don't have family or support system. They go home to Midwest - cannot get to VA support - no doctors in their plan, no facilities. Takes hours to get there - cannot afford the gas, cannot find someone with that kind of time to get them there.
San Diego County has such an amazing wealth of resources. They get support from the Balboa and La Jolla VA facilities and many other offices in the county. Bryan found out about Wounded Warrior Homes from his friends Brian and Patrick at REIG Asset Management. They are a HUGE sponsor for Wounded Warrior Homes. People don't realize how the system works and how long it takes to get the flow of benefits, especially when you are not near veteran support systems.
Compare this to the $500K willing to pay for dinner with Kim Kardashian.
Disgusting when you think HOW many veterans that same money could help.
Society can be so shallow and the media even worse to talk about that over the needs of those who have served this country. We need to retrain our media to cover what is and should be important.
REIG has hired one of the clients from WWH as an intern to give him training in the field he's interested in. Any company can make a difference through intern programs, part time help, mentoring, donating time and money.
Mia let us know that the residents, short or long term must be drug and alcohol free. Short term is an option. Some have been with them for only four months and then "graduate." She told us, "We have a great guy that is now a spokesperson for us - he's back on his feet, creating companies and serving as a mentor."
Angie recognized, "There needs to be a fine balance between caring and allowing them to launch themselves back to independence." Through Wounded Warior Homes, they connect the residents with attorneys, appointments - they ensure recreational activities, religious opportunities - anything to get them back to "normal" or their "new normal."
WoundedWarriorHomes.org - to learn more
https://www.stayclassy.org/checkout/donation?eid=10525
to donate RIGHT NOW.
Come see us at the Carlsbad Street Faire
Sunday, May 4th, 2014, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Carlsbad Village (Grand Ave. from Carlsbad Blvd. to Jefferson St.)
Second Annual Hot Rods 4 Heroes in Association with the San Diego County Parks & Recreation Department
as part of the Grand Opening of the San Diego Waterfront Park & Promenade, 1537 North Harbor Drive, San Diego, CA 92101
Across from the San Diego Maritime Museum
Come Join Us for a Great Day On The Bay!
100% goes to WoundedWarriorHomes.org
4th Annual Warrior’s Code Poker Ride
5th Annual Biggs Harley-Davidson of Southern California
1040 Los Vallecitos Blvd., San Marcos, CA 92069
live music, food, raffles at all events.
JUST ADDED EVENT - DETAILS TO COME:
Wyoming's own Bobby Chitwood concert - 2nd year helping them. He is the Wounded Warrior Homes' Celebrity spokesperson
June 29. Tickets on sale this month.
Further opportunities:
Help build a home program.
House donated by Team Capital 100% solar house. Trucked from DC to Irvine.
This home is IN STORAGE, ADA compliant and needs to get to the property!
Next phase of permit process, trucking to set on property - more home space.
$80,000 to finish this project!
You can specify your donation to go to that project, corporate sponsorship available.
Pacific Marine Credit Union recently raised $8000 in 30 days from their branches. It doesn't have to be hard, you just have to decide to help!
We ended the show talking about our no bullying stand and the Wisconsin news anchor story about a guy who badgered a newscaster for being overweight on the air. There was some... backlash to say the least.
October 2: Amy Scruggs & Band Performs – Wounded Warriors are her passion!
Amy was BACK in the studio with us. It’s the first time Bryan has liked Country – propbably becuase she’s a bit of a crossover, so darn beautiful inside and out and a lot of fun to spend time with — OH and she’s SO talented!
Amy played today in studio with her band as the prepare for a benefit concert.
Listen to today’s show
A bit about Amy:
Raised in San Dimas California, Amy has been singing since the age of three. Mother of 4, she finally lived out her dream that has always been rooted in country music. While in Nashville, Amy caught the attention of many industry professionals for her powerful vocals and passion for supporting our troops. Amy was featured in the July 09 issue of Country Weekly Magazine as well as the Sept 09 cover story for Nashville Music Guide. Her contagious spirit and her passion resonate to all who hear her. She has overcome tremendous circumstances and obstacles and now uses that to bring hope and encouragement through her music. Amy’s Patriotism shines through in her known traditional version of the National Anthem. In 2011 Amy was chosen to perform the National Anthem at Dodger Stadium for the 10 year anniversary of 9/11. Amy performed at Dodger Stadium at the request of the United States Army, Los Angeles Recruiting Battalion.
Since 2008, Amy has opened for many country music greats including; Trace Adkins, Clint Black, Charlie Daniels, Little Texas, Hal Katchum, Phil Vassar, Josh Gracin and others. Amy’s single “Coming Home” written by Dave Adams and produced by Paul McKenna is a celebration song for our heroes. Amy was officially endorsed by the American Veterans (AMVETS) Service Foundation for California from 2009 through 2011. At the beginning of 2010 Amy decided to set aside touring and dedicate her musical talents completely to the Veterans and Troops for all her performances. Amy’s oldest son, Ryan Scruggs, stepped into lead guitar in 2011 and shared the stage and dream with her by performing alongside her. Ryan is also credited with writing much of their new music. After years of life changing work behind her, Amy took a break from touring full time and she reentered the business world. Amy now resides in San Diego, CA and performs upon request at events honoring our veterans and heroes, while continuing to appear for speaking engagements. She continues outreach to the veteran community and women’s and children’s organizations while enjoying her position as Business Development Manager for New American Funding of San Diego. Amy continues to use her life experiences as humorous stories to help encourage people to have a healthy, positive perspective for daily life and its many challenges.
September 25: Amy Scruggs & her Band Performing for Wounded Warriors
Do you know Amy Scruggs? WHAT?! She's a country music star with a fantastic band and a huge heart for Wounded Warriors. What a coincidence, THAT's on of OUR FAVORITE CAUSES!
Amy played today in studio with her band as the prepare for a benefit concert. She's more than a talented country music artist, she has the most beautiful heart, almost as beautiful as she is outside!
Raised in San Dimas California, Amy has been singing since the age of
three. Mother of 4, she finally lived out her dream that has always been rooted
in country music. While in Nashville, Amy caught the attention of many industry
professionals for her powerful vocals and passion for supporting our troops.
Amy was featured in the July 09 issue of Country Weekly Magazine as well as
the Sept 09 cover story for Nashville Music Guide. Her contagious spirit and her
passion resonate to all who hear her. She has overcome tremendous
circumstances and obstacles and now uses that to bring hope and
encouragement through her music. Amy’s Patriotism shines through in her known
traditional version of the National Anthem. In 2011 Amy was chosen to perform
the National Anthem at Dodger Stadium for the 10 year anniversary of 9/11. Amy
performed at Dodger Stadium at the request of the United States Army, Los
Angeles Recruiting Battalion.
Since 2008, Amy has opened for many country music greats including;
Trace Adkins, Clint Black, Charlie Daniels, Little Texas, Hal Katchum, Phil
Vassar, Josh Gracin and others. Amy's single “Coming Home” written by Dave
Adams and produced by Paul McKenna is a celebration song for our heroes.
Amy was officially endorsed by the American Veterans (AMVETS) service
foundation for California from 2009 through 2011. At the beginning of 2010 Amy
decided to set aside touring and dedicate her musical talents completely to the
Veterans and Troops for all her performances. Amy’s oldest son, Ryan Scruggs,
stepped into lead guitar in 2011 and shared the stage and dream with her by
performing alongside her. Ryan is also credited with writing much of their new
music. After years of life changing work behind her, Amy took a break from
touring full time and she reentered the business world. Amy now resides in San
Diego, CA and performs upon request at events honoring our veterans and
heroes, while continuing to appear for speaking engagements. She continues
outreach to the veteran community and women’s and children’s organizations
while enjoying her position as Business Development Manager for New American
Funding of San Diego. Amy continues to use her life experiences as humorous
stories to help encourage people to have a healthy, positive perspective for daily
life and its many challenges
BIG DADDY LIVE
Big Daddy Live was born out of Bryan’s passion for real estate and has evolved into integrating his love and obsession for all things pop culture, celebrity news, music, television and movies.
Remember we are live Mondays 1-2 on Facebook.
Bureau of Real Estate License No.: 01501862
NEW SHOWS COMING SOON!
Bryan is back!
New episodes will be added in September 2019!
Stay Tuned and don't forget to subscribe!
About BDL
Causes & Social Issues
Entertainment & Current Events
Food and Foodies
Guest: Beth Sando
Guest: Brooke Kane-Wootten
Guest: Jennifer Koch
Guest: Jonathan Cohen-Kurzrock
Guest: Lexi Hutchings
Guest: Maddison Levine
Guest: Marci Bair
Guest: Morgan McGuire
Guest: Nikki Lam
Guest: Rachel LaMar
Guest: Ricky Silber
Guest: Sasha Shanner
Guest: Wes Shaw
Rants & Pet Peeves
Copyright 2019 Bryan Garrity. All rights reserved.
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So You Think You're Strong? Bet You Can't Do This!
By Scott Cochran
In a recent episode of the Guinness World Records Italian Show former World’s Strongest Man competitor, Franz “Austrian Rock” Muellner from Austria took on the challenge of setting a new record for the Longest duration restraining four motorcycles. Watch as motorcycles are attached to each of Franz's hands and feet, each driven by professional riders who have to ensure that the power of each motorbike exceeds 500 Newtons of force.
The riders include Italian road racer Fabrizio Pirovano, European Superstock champion Lorenzo Alfonsi, plus former Grand Prix motorcycle road racers Alessandro Gramigni and Paolo Casoli. Franz has to restrain the bikes for a minimum of 10 seconds to achieve the record, but the strongman manages a grueling 24 seconds.
At one point Franz’s right leg alone manages to restrain a whopping 175 kilos or 386 lbs.
The “Austrian Rock” also holds the Guinness World Records title for the Heaviest weight supported on the shoulders. He supported an average of 560 kg (1,234 lb) on his shoulders for 30 seconds while a helicopter landed on a frame which he was partly lifting.
The record was achieved on the set of El Show Olímpico, in Mexico City, Mexico, back in 2008. Make sure you don’t miss an episode of the Italian Show by subscribing to the Guinness World Records YouTube channel.
PRODUCTS FROM THE BIKER NATION
Snoop Dog at the Chip? It's no April Fools Joke!
Virginia's Blue Ridge Press Tour
Would You Get Tattooed With Burnt Rubber?
Funny Photo of Traffic Cop in India goes viral
TODAY IS NATIONAL TOPLESS DAY
Biker Nation Selected as Top E-Commerce Site to shop
His Bike Starts to Wobble and Then the Unthinkable Happens
Kyle Petty Charity Ride Across America Raises $1.3 Million for Charity
Rocker Pink Gets a Custom Indian As Push Present
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by Bill Stamets
The unwed versus the undead: “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”
Posted in Uncategorized by Bill Stamets on February 7, 2016
written and directed by Burr Steers
based on Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel based on Jane Austen’s novel
acted by Lily James, Sam Riley, Jack Huston, Bella Heathcote, Douglas Booth, Matt Smith, Charles Dance, Lena Headey
“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”– the premise alone amused me for many of this film’s first 107 minutes. Writer-director Burt Steers displays a winning regard for both an English novel and the zombie trope. A Venn diagram of their respective fan bases would show little overlap until now.
Packaged as a “reimagining of” Jane Austen’s 1813 novel “Pride and Prejudice,” Steers’ slight film adapts the 2009 parody “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” For that mash-up of landed gentry and the rabble of “unmentionables,” Seth Grahame-Smith shared his byline with Austen. His other efforts include “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters,” “Android Karenina” and “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Killer.”
The impecunious parents of the five Bennet sisters seek marital prospects of means. Elizabeth Bennet (Lily James) is the eldest of the lethal siblings, all of whom acquired zombie-slaying marital arts skills in China, not to mention training in musketry. Mr. Darcy (Sam Riley) is indeed pecunious, though initially off-putting to Elizabeth, with his haughty airs and thoroughly 19th-century sexism.
That Darcy– “Darcy, Colonel Darcy,” as he insists when introduced to Elizabeth– trained under masters in Japan, versus China, indicates this gentleman’s higher class standing. Elizabeth shows off her skills by vanquishing a ninja on duty at the estate of his fierce eye-patched sister, Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Lena Headey). Grahame-Smith relates Elizabeth extracting his bloody heart with her bare hand and taking a nibble: “`Curious,’ said Elizabeth, still chewing. `I have tasted many a heart, but I dare say, I find the Japanese ones a bit tender.’” Hardy foreplay between Ms. Bennet and Mr. Darcy will entail sparring in their respective Oriental fight styles.
A traditional romantic plot of their courtship alternates with scenes of kick-ass swordplay. There are zombies to decapitate and insurgents to thwart. Steers, however, cannot pull off a viable hybrid. “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” wobbles like two earlier chimeras of screen genres: “Cowboys & Aliens” (2011) and “Wild Wild West” (1999).
But may we go back to that attempted coup by rotting corpses, if you please? “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains” is the film’s opening line, a twist on Austen’s first sentence.
Many years into England’s “mysterious plague”– 70 in the film, 55 in the book– a sub-population of undead “dreadfuls” emerges. If upon infection they are fed the brains of pigs instead of gobs of grey matter they would otherwise scoop from the cracked open skulls of their countrymen and countrywomen, their rot is arrested and they do not become full-blown zombies. Their dispositions are nearly reasonable. They attend a church of their own. Déclassé, yes. Mindless biters, not so much.
“These new zombies can be reasoned with,” pleads an appeaser who preaches tolerance of this demonized minority. “Before we know it they’ll be running for parliament,” frets one Englishman. “It’s only a matter to time before they outnumber us,” notes another in the at-risk class of the living.
Steers skips a few choice details from Grahame-Smith’s novel: enterprising huntsmen set traps baited with cauliflower heads that zombies mistake for human brains, and then sell their catch for pieces of silver. Municipal facilities burn these iron-caged unfortunates around the clock.
I quite like the looming civil war in the last reel. An underclass of the undead versus the over-privileged living. An upsurge of the repressed colonial Other is the subtext. The film’s intro offers a tidbit of backstory: it is vilely rumored that the pandemic originated in France. That theory is hinted in the graphics for the film’s trailer and poster: in the title “and” is twice replaced with French cruciform plus (+) signs fashioned on la croix pattée.
Class was an all-consuming preoccupation in Austen’s world. In his 1833 book “England and the English,” Edward Lytton Bulwer wrote: “By this intermixture of the highest aristocracy with the more subaltern ranks of society, there are far finer and more numerous grades of dignity in this country than in any other.” Austen’s attention to social rank was lauded in 1948 by Cornell University prof David Daiches: “she is the most realistic novelist of her age, and the only English novelist of stature who was in a sense a Marxist before Marx.”
Irreversible downward mobility is the fate of the highborn– once infected by a zombie. And the pandemic facilitates a kind of upward move for the deceased of all classes, regardless of the cemetery where they are supposed to spend eternity. All of the interred rise again, “de-graved” for a change of station in life.
The Motion Picture Association of America rated “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” PG-13 for “zombie violence and action, and brief suggestive material.” I doubt the raters suspect it is socialist or post-colonialist issues that this film is `suggesting.’
Teasing is what I’d call the film’s finale. In earlier bits of “zombie violence and action” the lunging camera delivers shock shots of wide-eyed, open-mouthed biters and those about-to-get-their-brains-eaten. One zombie gets a pre-decapitated point-of-view shot. Steers ends with close-ups of the dumbfounded faces of Elizabeth, Darcy and their wedding party. He comically prolongs the payoff of a reverse shot. At last we behold the onrush of unwelcome guests indecently interrupting the nuptials.
Tagged with: Burr Steers, colonial Other, Jane Austen, Pride + Prejudice + Zombies, Pride and Prejudice, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Seth Grahame-Smith, zombies
“Put the mask on now!”
Posted in Uncategorized by Bill Stamets on January 10, 2016
produced and directed by Julian Roffman
written by Frank Taubes, Sandy Haber, Franklin Delessert
shot by Herbert S. Alpert
scored by Louis Applebaum and Myron Schaeffer, with Electro Magic Sound performed, in part, on a Hamograph
acted by Paul Stevens, Claudette Nevins, Bill Walker, Anne Collings, Martin Lavut, Leo Leyden
screens with: Kelley’s Plasticon Pictures (1922, 8 minutes)
cardboard red/green anaglyphic “masks” provided for three 3-D sequences.
Bob Furmanek, founder of the 3-D Film Archive, appears at both screenings on January 10 at 3pm and 12 at 6pm at the Gene Siskel Film Center
Canadian director Julian Roffman creates a horror film about the perils of peering into the primordial male sub-subconscious in “The Mask.” The 3-D gimmick of this 1961 curiosity is how it cleverly interpolates the audience into the screen mind of a psychiatrist who dons the 3,000-year-old mask.
Shot in Toronto, “The Mask” was restored by the 3-D Film Archive in New York, and re-released this fall at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. For a U.S. re-release back in 1971 it was titled “Eyes of Hell.”
“You will see things never before seen on any screen,” publicist Jim Moran cautions us in the opening square-up. Posing with the jewel-encrusted prop, he continues: “You in this theater are especially privileged to join in seeing the terrifying sights that can only be seen through the mask… Each of you has been given a mask. When you see the mask put on in the picture, you put yours on too.”
The first horror feature made in Canada, “The Mask” not only invites us to participate in an “ancient ritual so unearthly, so terrifying it has been wiped out of the memory of man,” this black-and-white work evokes our primal encounter with cinema itself. “The greatest thrill since you first saw a picture move!” ballyhoos a poster from 1961.
Roffman (also going by Hoffman) starts his psycho-horror tale at night in the woods. A woman screams. Her killer awakes the next morning with three scratches on his face. He’s Michael Radin (Martin Lavut). “It’s like a nightmare,” he yells at his psychiatrist, Dr. Allan Barnes (Paul Stevens). “Can’t you understand this is not just another case of neurosis or psychosis? This is a living nightmare.”
Before taking his own life in his rented room, Michael mails the “cursed” mask to Allan’s office. Lieutenant Martin (Bill Walker) is on the case. Doctor Soames (Leo Leyden) at the Museum of Ancient History informs him that his late employee was “a brilliant archaeologist” who was studying this “great archaeological find” after hours.
Roffman reportedly asked the National Institute of Health for a psychiatrist for background. In a 1991 interview in Filmfax magagazine, the director claimed: “In South America and in Africa, the witch doctors rub peyote inside the mask and the heat from their face releases the drug. They go into a tantrum, they have their own visions. So we knew the mask could do this. I researched masks and I found a South American Indian Mask that the tribes had used.”
Allan reads the letter Michael included in the box with the museum’s mask: “Once I was a scholar. Now I am like an animal, fleeing from my own nightmares… Are you certain that just underneath the surface of your own mind there does not lurk a storm and fury waiting– waiting to be released? Are you willing to make the experiment, doctor? You hold the key in your own hand. If you are not afraid, put the mask on now. Put the mask on now! Put the mask on now!! Put the mask on now!!!”
That’s your cue to put on your anaglyphic red/green mask too. “Look through your mask…If you can’t take it…Take it off!” instructs that same poster. This will be the first of three weird 3-D visits to a netherworld of deliriously unclear coordinates.
We see the archaeologist with sunken eyes. He dwells like a ghoul in a zone with much dry ice. Men in masks and robes place women atop sacrificial altars. Funhouse shots startle: eyeballs hurl into the theater, snakes lunge out of eye sockets of skulls, disarmed hands grasp, and fireballs discharge from the palms of officiants.
If this is the point of view of the psychiatrist, what is his late patient doing in the psychiatrist’s subconscious? Or are we experiencing replays of Michael’s memories now embedded in the mask? The camera lens never simulates the eyes of the character wearing the mask and looking through its eye openings. Instead, the mask operates more like Roffman’s camera: it lets us watch a 3D-movie in the 2D-movie. But we never become two-eyed witnesses to the weirdness, nor do we reenact misogynist, murderous impulses as first-person stranglers.
How the mask works mystifies the characters as much as must have the screenwriters. Wearing it is addictive, according to one diagnosis. “The legend states that the mask can hypnotize a man, and bring out the evil in him; bring it out and magnify it,” reports the Lieutenant.
“There’s much to be learned here,” insists Allan, in between his 3-D trips at the beckoning of the mask’s reverb voice. “Man’s most secret mind. Of a world that exists even deeper than the subconscious… The hope of man to know what his mind really is. What he really thinks.” Killing women is what men really, really want to do, reveals “The Mask.” Under the mask’s influence, Allan almost strangles his secretary one night.
“I hold out the knowledge of the universe and you– you spit on it,” Allan rebukes his fiancee Pam Albright (Claudette Nevins) after she resists trying on the mask herself. “Get out of my way.” Then he forces her to put it on. She reports no effect. “The Mask” here implies she lacks a subconscious, or the 3,000 year-old rite admits women only for sacrificial use.
“The Mask” tracks with post-war noir and horror that’s typically disquieted by mind control and the chaos inside our skulls. View at your own risk, per a disclaimer on the 1961 poster: “The management is not responsible for nervous breakdowns!”
A remake to repay the planet: “Point Break” goes eco-extreme
Posted in Uncategorized by Bill Stamets on December 27, 2015
directed and shot by Ericson Core
written by Kurt Wimmer
acted by Luke Bracey, Edgar Ramirez, Delroy Lindo, Ray Winstone, Teresa Palmer
FBI undercover rookie embeds in a cell of eco-spiritual sports extremists. Big stunts and green propaganda ensue in the new “Point Break.” Mystifying death wishes honor Mother Earth.
Ericson Core is both director and director of photography in this watchable remake of “Point Break” by Kathyrn Bigelow (“Zero Dark Thirty,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Strange Days”). The 1991 original starred Keanu Reeves as a quarterback-turned-FBI agent who hangs with bank-robbing surfers lead by sage-in-a-wetsuit Patrick Swayze.
This “re-imagined story,” as the press notes spin Core’s effort, suffers from uneven casting. Edgar Ramirez (“Zero Dark Thirty,” “The Liberator,” “Carlos”) is an inspired choice for Bodhi in the Swayze role. Luke Bracey, on the other hand, is a lackluster Johnny Utah, the Reeves character. He’s made over as an ex-extreme sports dude. His YouTube videos earlier tagged him as Utah. That’s what everyone calls him now.
The 1991 and 2015 films are set up with the same supporting roles. Utah is handled by a boss (Delroy Lindo) in the bureau’s office and an older partner (Ray Winstone in Gary Busey’s role) out in the field. His love interest Samsara (Teresa Palmer) gets less screen time than her 1991 counterpart. This time her parents perish in an avalanche, not a car wreck. Both films climax with a showdown between Utah, Bodhi and a mighty big wave.
Screenwriter Kurt Wimmer adds no insight into how Utah juggles badge and thrills. Bigelow lent more focus on that clash. Wimmer wrote and directed “Equilibrium,” a 2002 thriller set in a grey near-future when emotion is outlawed. A law enforcer (Christian Bale) is compromised by values espoused by suspects he chases, much like Utah is.
What’s intriguing now are the choices to expand W. Peter Iliff’s original screenplay. Wimmer multiplies the sports besides surfing and skydiving, and increases locations beyond the original’s California coast with an Australian coda. This time the crimes are more audacious. Bodhi’s motives transcend thrill-for-thrill’s sake.
Bodhi’s band in the 1991 film hit “thirty banks in three years.” Johnny detected a pattern in sync with the local surf season. A “`Point Break’ effect” turns up in a study published last April in Criminal Justice Studies. Its authors correlated 16,075 police incident reports and daily surf conditions posted online for two beaches in Ventura, California– just up the coast from where the 1991 film was set and partly shot. Using panel negative binomial models, the criminologists posit “micro-geographic” dynamics could aid “predictive policing.” Their statistics do not tally bank jobs as a sub-category, however.
The 2015 Bodhi (Ramirez) diversifies his theater of operations with international targets. His crew hits a diamond sorting facility, makes off with “10 million carats,” and “then gave it all away to the poorest of the poor in the slums of Mumbai.” They hide in the hold of a freight plane, attach parachutes to loads of U.S. currency, push them out the cargo door, and shower the Mexican countryside with cash. They torch a lumber operation on the Congo River. They trigger rock slides on French mountain road to bury a convoy of mining trucks bearing “a 100 million in gold bullion.”
They only rob a bank when the FBI somehow freezes the assets of super-rich Pascal Al Fariq (Nikolai Kinski, who played Karl Lagerfeld in “Yves Saint Laurent” last year), the European sponsor of Bodhi’s extreme sports activity in exotic locales. The 1991 loot was needed to underwrite international travel to primo surf spots during Venice Beach’s off-season.
“I need a theory,” pleads Utah’s superior (Lindo) in the 2015 film. “What kind of people are we dealing with here?” Utah (Bracey) has one: Bodhi’s extreme stunts coincide with his covert anti-corporate actions. He figures Bodhi and his crew are following the path of the late “eco-warrior” Ono Ozaki who died trying to defend whales from a Norwegian whaling ship.
“One of the first recognized extreme poly athletes, [Ozaki] challenged the extreme sports world to a series of eight ordeals that he said honored the forces of nature,” continues Utah. Bodhi sees each opportunity in nature to attempt one of his death-defying feats as a “gift” from Earth. And “to balance out that gift” he and his comrades “give back something that was taken from the Earth” by the greed of others. Thus, the gold and the diamonds are their “offerings.” Eco-mumbo-jumbo it may be, but give Wimmer some carbon credits for tapping into a Gaia-globalization-GPS-GoPro zeitgeist.
“The film is replete with the most daring athleticism ever seen in a motion picture,” hypes the press kit that names 35 big wave surfers, sheer-face snowboarders, high-speed motocross riders, wing suit flyers, free rock climbers, and Ironman triathletes who contribute to “Point Break” on camera or as consultants. To list crews in 11 countries, the end credits run 16 minutes.
Alcon Entertainment, the remakers of “Point Break,” is preparing a sequel to “Blade Runner.” The Hollywood Reporter, Variety and Australian newspapers tracked the making of the second “Point Break”: a “sequel” to the first film, to be set in Southeast Asia with Swayze, was announced in May 2007; one year later Jan de Bont was supposed to direct it in Singapore and nearby locations; in September 2009 he exited “Point Break 2,” replaced by the future director of “Kick-Ass 2”; five years later action star Gerard Butler “pulled out of the hotly-anticipated Point Break remake.”
A troubled production trajectory might have dented the new “Point Break” with more than lapses in dialogue. Larger faults date back to the original.
I admit it’s trivial to point out that on the remake’s December 25, 2015 release date, the only Mumbai building with 100 floors or more is the unfinished residential World One. And as scripted or delivered, I think that “100 million uncut diamonds” would far exceed “the entire month’s yield from the company’s mines.”
Nor does this disconnect between a line of dialogue and a line in the press notes really matter in the 2015 film: after quitting extreme sports, Utah earns his GED, goes to college, and graduates from law school– all within three years. His character in the 1991 film somehow goes to “law school” on a “football scholarship.” He finds Bodhi’s “passports to Sumatra.”
A serious flaw in the first film is how the protagonist was conceived and cast. A two-act parody titled “Point Break Live!” staged by New Rock Theater in Los Angeles made that point cleverly. Variety reported in June 2008: “the Keanu Reeves character, Johnny Utah, is cast from the audience at every show, in an effort to reproduce Reeves’ peculiar opaqueness. The chosen actor is provided all of his or her lines via cue cards.”
What’s Utah doing in the plot on screen? He’s there to moralize about two callings at odds: as a seeker of peak moments facing great risks in sublime nature, versus a public servant upholding laws. Both paths lead to self-sacrifice, one cooler than the other. “The only law that matters is gravity,” divulges Bodhi, as he steps off a precipice and disappears in a thundering cascade. (He only gives that catchy line in the trailer.) Utah the lawman leaps in pursuit. Bodhi earlier reveals he knew Utah was secretly gathering evidence against him. “Then why’d you let me in?” asks Utah. “Because I thought I could save you,” answers Bodhi.
The 1991 film and the 2015 film both have scenes where Johnny Utah empties his gun by firing in the air instead of at Bodhi. He lets him get away and lies about it to the FBI. And at the end of both films, he lets Bodhi surf a towering wave that’s sure to drown him. A shot or two later Kathryn Bigelow shows Johnny tossing his FBI badge into the waves on an Australian beach. By contrast, Core has him accept his new “fast-tracked” badge on a river bank, below the Angel Falls in Venezuela.
Can either “Point Break” speak to its time? In 2011 Michael DeLuca advised the Hollywood Reporter: “`Point Break’ wasn’t just a film, it was a Zen meditation on testosterone-fueled action and manhood in the late 20th century and we hope to create the same for the young 21st!” He is not listed now among the 16 or so producers of the remake.
Andrew Kosove is one of those producers. At a press roundtable he commented on the times in which each film was made. He pointed out the first film was preceded by “12 years of Republican administrations and Ronald Reagan and Wall Street Go-Go 80’s.” “Twenty-five years later, we’ve experienced a level of wealth consolidation, globalization, and corporate power across lines and countries that were inconceivable in 1991.”
Kosove over-reaches to claim relevance for this entertainment property. A clue to the dubious coherence of the script, if not the marketing, is another line in the trailer that’s not in the film: Utah alerts his colleagues that Bodhi aims “to disrupt the international financial markets.” Good luck finding any hint of that agenda in the film itself.
Utah spells out Ozaki’s formula to the bureau: “Anyone who could find the perfect line existing through each one of these [eight] ordeals, he believed, would achieve nirvana.” Bodhi later corrects Utah’s read on his distinctive quest: “We’re not here to reach enlightenment, to find nirvana. We’re here to try to save this place by becoming one with it. And to do that you need to be able to let go of your sense of self, completely.”
Make an offering of your very being. Recurring dialogue quasi-ecstatically equates “perfect” and “beauty” and “death.” A Nietzsche-adrenalized martyr to Mother Earth, Bodhi exits “Point Break” rhapsodizing: “Isn’t death beautiful?”
Tagged with: Bodhi, eco-spiritual, Ericson Core, extreme sports, green propaganda, Kathryn Bigelow, Kurt Wimmer, Luke Bracey, Point Break, Utah
Unseriously, take my city: “Chi-Raq”
Chi-Raq
directed by Spike Lee
written by Spike Lee and Kevin Willmott
scored by Terence Blanchard
acted by Nick Cannon, Teyonah Parris, Angela Bassett, John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Wesley Snipes, Jennifer Hudson, Steve Harris, Harry Lennix, D.B. Sweeney
presented by Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions
Turn yourself in if you shoot a child in Chicago and no one on the street tells the police what they saw. That’s the takeaway from “Chi-Raq,” Spike Lee’s misfiring R-rated 124-minute public service announcement. “THIS IS AN EMERGENCY” pulses a red letter alert on a black background.
You might decide his first shot-in-Chicago film also shows us: satire doesn’t heal a city, citizens do. Lee’s scattershot directing and character-building fail to realize his urban sociologizing and black-on-black scolding.
“Chi-Raq” opens with a promising rap number titled “Pray 4 My City” performed and co-penned by Nick Cannon. Lyrics appear on the screen, less like subtitles, more like a sing-a-long: “Please Pray For My City… Too Much Hate In My City… Dey Die Every Day In My City… And Y’all Mad Cuz I Don’t Call It Chicago. But I Don’t Live In No Fuckin’ Chicago. Boy, I Live In Chi-Raq.”
After gunfire erupts at Da End Up club on North Milwaukee Avenue where her rapper boyfriend Demetrius “Chi-Raq” Dupree (Nick Cannon from NBC’s “Caught on Camera with Nick Cannon”) is on stage taunting and threatening enemies. After his gang rival Cyclops (Wesley Snipes wearing an eyepatch) torches the apartment where she is making love to Chi-Raq later that night. And after an 11-year-old girl is shot in a gang drive-by. That is when Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris) decides to do something.
Lysistrata’s book-loving flatscreen-lacking neighbor, Miss Helen (Angela Bassett), tells her to Google Leymah Gbowee, the leader of Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace who shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for ending a civil war in her country. Here Lee inserts a clip from “Pray the Devil Back to Hell,” a documentary by Abigail E. Disney and Gini Reticker. One tactic some women tried was stopping having sex with their men. In “Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War: a Memoir” written with Carol Mithers, Gbowee admits: “It had little or no practical effect, but it was extremely valuable in getting us media attention.”
A sex strike might work on the south side of Chicago, figures Lysistrata, who’s never heard of her namesake in the title of a bawdy Greek play by Aristophanes. Gbowee’s book never namedrops “Lysistrata.”
The original Lysistrata organizes the women of Athens and Sparta to stop making love to the men of Athens and Sparta in order to stop them from making war. “If only we may stir so amorous a feeling among the men that they stand firm as sticks, we shall indeed deserve the name of peace-makers among the Greeks,” she proclaims. “It is much to be regretted that the phallus element should be so conspicuous in this play,” annotated barrister-at-law turned Aristophanes translator Benjamin Bickley Rogers in a 1911 London edition of “Lysistrata.”
The 2015 Lysistrata convinces women of color to quit sex with members of the Spartans and Trojans until these two Chicago gangs cease shooting. Montages of television news clips report women marching in solidarity around the world: Athens, Copenhagen, Delhi, Istanbul, Lahore, Montreal, Paris, Santo Domingo, Sao Paulo, Tokyo and Da Republic of Brooklyn. As if all those women seek to end gang gunfire in their cities too.
A gang-free variant of this gambit figured in the September 30, 2015 episode of ABC’s family comedy “`black•ish” when ad exec dad Dre (Anthony Anderson) announced his intent to buy a handgun to defend the home front in his largely white upper-middle class suburb. “I hope that gun is more important to you than sex,” countered his anesthesiologist wife Bo (Tracee Ellis Ross).
Samuel L. Jackson plays the fly Dolmedes, no doubt getting the highest per capita cut of the costume budget. Addressing the audience, this strutting old-school sage kicks off his running commentary by explaining why his patter and the lines of other characters will rhyme: “In Da year 411 BC, before Baby Jesus Y’all, Da Greek Aristophanes penned a Play satirizin’ his DAY. And in the style of his Time, ‘Stophanes made dat Shit Rhyme.” He decodes “BC” as “before Baby Jesus Y’all.” (This is the way Lee reproduces the dialogue in the film’s press notes.)
“Chi-Raq” co-screenwriters Lee and Kevin Willmott depart from Aristophanes by adding seven of these direct addresses to viewers. That’s parabasis Y’all. In the most disconcerting instance, Dolmedes is flanked by a black gangbanger and a white cop. Both fire countless rounds at the audience. In the original play actors hurled no spears through the fourth wall.
Aristophanic touches appear in the end credits of in “Chi-Raq.” Bit players are named Althea, Apollo, Hecuba, Oedipus, Olympia, Pindar and Tereus. Aristophanes likewise christens members of his chorus with “fancy names,” as classicists call them. Two characters in Lee’s film meet at a coffee shop not located in Greek Town named Deus Ex Machina. Englewood vernacular replaces the Attic and Doric dialect used by Aristophanes.
Lee’s “No peace, no piece” and “No peace, no pussy” slogans sound like Aristophanes’ “No more money, no more war” when Lysistrata leads women to occupy the Acropolis and deny menfolk its treasury to fund warfare. Lee’s counterpart is the Illinois Army National Guard armory on South Cottage Grove Avenue– where in World War II the University of Chicago processed and stored uranium for the Manhattan Project. I doubt Lee could secure access to film in the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on South LaSalle Street.
Deploying “Lysistrata” for anti-war agendas long after the Peloponnesian War is not new. Seattle’s Negro Repertory Company, part of the Federal Theatre Project, staged a “Lysistrata” adaptation set in Africa. After one performance on September 17, 1937, the Works Progress Administration closed the play. Seattle Times theater critic Misha Berson described a July 2013 staging of “Lysistrata” that was “framed as an entertainment for and by American soldiers, posted in a place where the U.S. is embroiled in a long, bloody war (Iraq? Afghanistan?).”
“Iambic hexameter verse is integrated with rap-style couplets,” wrote Berson. Lee’s rhetorical device of choice is chiasmus and its kin antimetabole, signifying-style tropes of transposing reversals of words that is used in rap and earlier African-American discourses. He borrows his epigram for “She’s Gotta Have It” (1986)– “women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget”– from Zora Neale Hurston.
“You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man” is a famous example in “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself” (1845.) “We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, the rock was landed on us,” observed Malcolm X in his March 29, 1964 speech in Washington Heights, New York. Lee honed that line for Denzel Washington in “Malcolm X” (1992): “We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us.”
The Lysistrata Project launched in 2003 by two actresses in New York City coordinated public readings of “Lysistrata” in 59 countries to protest the Iraq war. A 2004 spin-off staged in Cairo was set in Baghdad. Women occupy the Ministry of Oil, standing in for the Acropolis, and deny their husbands intercourse until Iraq and the U.S. declare peace.
“Chi-Raq”– advertised as a “searing satire of gun violence in America”– is not Lee’s first foray into satire. He opens “Bamboozled” with Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans), an African-American Harvard-educated television producer, articulating a 36-word dictionary definition of “satire.” He delivers this voiceover while brushing his teeth and shaving his head, on his way to work at the offices of Continental Network System (CNS) in Manhattan.
New Line Cinema’s press notes list this 2000 film as a “blistering satire” and a “biting satire” based on a “searingly satirical script.” Lee acknowledges “A Face in the Crowd” (1957) and “Network” (1976) as precursors of his sharp critique of the mass culture industry in New York City. The DVD repositions “Bamboozled” as a “searing parody of American television.”
Frustrated he cannot air authentic African-American fare, Delacroix schemes to get fired. It’s the only way he can get out of his CNS contract. He pitches a purposefully offensive minstrel series featuring blacks in blackface in a watermelon patch. CNS senior vice president Thomas Dunwitty (Michael Rapaport) loves it.
“Our aim is to destroy these stereotypes,” Delacroix tells his incredulous assistant Sloan (Jada Pinkett-Smith). “The good Reverend Martin Luther King did not enjoy seeing his people beaten on the six o’clock news. However, white Americans needed to see that in order to move this country to change. They need to see this show for that exact same reason.”
The scheme backfires in a big way. America loves the retro show. In repurposed news video, President Bill Clinton sits at his desk in the Oval Office watching the premiere. He claps and says, “I like this.” Delacroix’s career takes off. Black activists picket CNS.
Sloan’s brother, Big Blak Africa (Mos Def, wearing a shirt reading “The African Hellacaust”), belongs to the Mau Mau cell of militants who respell “black”– per “ole slave owner Webster”– as “blak.” Lee recycles the name of a 1950’s Puerto Rican gang in Brooklyn borrowing from the 1950’s uprising in Kenya. “Right here in Harlem, in New York City, we need a Mau Mau,” declared Malcolm X in a 1964 rally for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
Lee renders the Mau Maus as gun-toting fools swigging 64-ouncers of Da Bomb Malt Liquor advertised on Delacroix’s show. They kidnap his Juilliard-trained tap dancing star Manray (Savion Glover) and threaten to execute him on the internet. A court order lets networks air a live “Dance of Death” feed at 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Black-on-black killings in the film’s climax are tragic, not comic. Even if Delacroix’s exit line is “Keep them laughing.”
Lee ends one draft of his “Bamboozled” screenplay (an extra on the DVD) with different dialogue. “My God, what have I done?!” Delacroix gasps in his dying breath. “CUT TO: ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE OF MALCOLM X. MALCOLM X: You’ve been had. You’ve been took. You’ve been led astray. Run amok. You’ve been bamboozled.” Those lines come from a speech Lee scripted for Denzel Washington in the title role “Malcolm X” (1992). Barack Obama worked Lee’s lines into speeches while campaigning in South Carolina in 2008.
Delacroix’s fatal failure to manipulate the white-owned media turns “Bamboozled” into a cautionary tale about satire itself. “Chi-Raq” reprises those risks as political entertainment. Lee’s co-writer Kevin Willmott earlier scored mixed success in two satires with hooks to African-American history.
Willmott scripted and directed “Destination: Planet Negro!” (2013), which received its world premiere at the Black Harvest Film Festival in Chicago. In 1939 black scientists propose solving the “Negro Problem” by rocketing to Mars. A time warp diverts their spaceship and a baffled trio (Willmott plays one of the voyagers) lands on the outskirts of contemporary Kansas City. President Obama, baggy pants and the use of “nigga” all inspire satiric commentary.
More successful is “C.S.A– The Confederate States of America,” a faux documentary Willmott wrote and directed in 2004 that’s billed as a Spike Lee Production. Its counterfactual history conceit is the South won the War of Northern Aggression. Slavery is unabolished. The premise is reminiscent of “It Happened Here,” a 1964 film by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo positing a German occupation of Britain in 1944.
“The following program is of foreign origin,” states an opening disclaimer for “C.S.A– The Confederate States of America,” as broadcast “uncensored” by fictional Channel 6 Confederate Television in San Francisco. “The content does not reflect the view of this station and may be unsuitable for children and servants. Viewer Discretion is advised.”
Willmott’s make-believe BBC documentary satirizes many PBS tropes. Archival photos show the Confederate flag raised at Iwo Jima and planted on the moon. There’s a sepia clip from a 1915 D.W. Griffith epic titled “The Hunt for Dishonest Abe.” A TV sports clip shows a pro football team named the New York Niggers. Willmott inserts TV ads for the Slave Shopping Network and the weekday afternoon show Better Homes & Plantations.
Calibrating tone is a challenge for satirists. Not everyone in “Bamboozled” is a target, of course. Lee aligns with anti-CNS picketers Rev. Al Sharpton and Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. appearing as themselves, while mocking the Mau Maus for their tactics and the way they dress and speak.
Cochran later served as Lee’s counsel when TNN, owned by Viacom Music and Entertainment Group, announced rebranding the “first television network for men” as Spike TV in 2003. “It’s clear when you say ‘Spike,’ everybody knows who you are talking about,” Cochran argued in Manhattan State Supreme Court. Lee lost. Sharpton joined Lee for the New York City premiere of “Chi-Raq” at the Ziegfeld Theater and exhort the audience: “60 years ago today– December 1, 1955– Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus; we refuse 60 years later to give up our community to gun violence.”
Lee’s 1996 drama “Get on the Bus” listens to a busload of a dozen Los Angeles men heading to The Million Man March in Washington, D.C. An end credit declares the film’s independence from the white media bedeviling “Bamboozled”: “This film was completely funded by 15 African American Men.” Including Cochran. “Why is it that white people still control what gets on the air?” wonders Wayans in the press kit for “Bamboozled.”
“This could all be a setup,” riffs Mike (Steve White). “This could be like a conspiracy, man… This could be like the trains into Dachua and Auschwitz… this is some apocalypso type shit about to happen maybe man.” The unprecedented assembly of African-American manhood could be a target of opportunity for some crazed white official with his thumb on a thermonuclear trigger. Mike’s slight smile and jokey manner imply he’s not really serious about all this. It’s a knowing nod to paranoid theories circulating on talk radio and in barber shops.
Other socio-political opinions in Lee’s work fall less clearly under the rubric of teasing. When is Lee ridiculing the rhetoric voiced by one of his characters, and when is Lee ventriloquizing through another character as his mouthpiece with zero irony or parody?
Father Mike Corridan (John Cusack) is a character in “Chi-Raq” modeled on Father Michael Pfleger, senior pastor of the Faith Community of St. Sabina. Father Corridan refers to black-on-black crime as “self-inflicted genocide.” At the Toronto International Film Festival in September, Lee used that same loaded phrase when interviewed by Deadline Hollywood: “I would just be irresponsible as a filmmaker to not comment on this self-inflicted genocide, which is happening.”
Would Tel Aviv cops or community activists ever phrase Jew-on-Jew homicide like that? The ill-chosen line recalls how a white detective in “Clockers” refers to the black housing project in his Brooklyn precinct as a “self-cleaning oven.” That 1995 film by Lee is unambiguously not a satire. In neither film does blackness trigger or target killing. Yet Lee’s and Pfleger’s rhetoric implies a parallel between Spartan versus Trojan gunfire and Hutu slaughter of Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994.
“Three places you’re going to end up: county morgue, or county hospital or county jail,” Father Corridan counsels Chi-Raq. “People downtown don’t give a fuck about you… It’s privatized now to capitalize… You’re hanging from a tree. You’re not even costin’ them money. You making them money, and nobody’s going to hear your bitchin’ because this is the new legal form of lynching.” (Miss Helen earlier claims the opposite: “So many people shot, hospitals going broke.”)
If Lee thinks it’s nonsense to say tax-funded agencies in Cook County are capitalist enterprises making profits off the misery of the black man, “Chi-Raq” inflects those lines with no undertone or overtone of satire. In reply to my email asking about the politics articulated by Cusack’s character, Pfleger says they were “taken almost Word for Word” from his Sunday sermons and various conversations with Lee and Cusack.
An end credit for “Chi-Raq” honors Pfleger as “Spiritual Advisor/ Consultant.” On November 20 he updated his Facebook profile picture with a “Chi-Raq” flag. Lee told Chuck Todd on MSNBC that Pfleger is “a real-life living saint.”
“Just got back from Praying with Spike and crew and cast for his movie. Today is Day 1 of Filming… I believe God is using Spike in a powerful way,” was Pfleger’s June 1st post on Facebook. Cast member and southside native Harry Lennix was a guest speaker at Pfleger’s annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration on January 18th.
Lysistrata’s boycott succeeds, notwithstanding a major diss of her tactics by the Commissioner of Public Safety (Lennix): “Who do you think you are, Rosa Parks? What a damn farce.” Is Lee caricaturing Chicago activists, like the Mau Maus in “Bamboozled”? Or thinking wishfully for an unlikely outcome?
At a formal signing ceremony where everyone is dressed in white– except Chi-Raq, still garbed in Spartan gang purple and wearing a necklace with a miniature gold hand grenade– Chicago Mayor McCloud (D.B. Sweeney) proclaims: “We the United Federation of Gangsters for the State of Drillinois decree: Every Fortune 500 country has signed the peace accord, ensuring that every person in the hoods of America of employment age is guaranteed a job, and I don’t mean no minimum wage either. New hospitals and mental health facilities will be built by the United States Government. And finally, there’ll be a much needed trauma center on Chicago’s south side. Lysistrata, this is what justice looks like.”
The plot at this point forgets Lysistrata’s original goal of peace between two Englewood gangs. Previously the commissioner informs the mayor: “She wants world peace.” As for the promised Emmet Till Memorial Trauma Center, on December 17th the University of Chicago’s hospital announced plans to create a level 1 adult trauma center.
No one can accuse “Chi-Raq” of taking gangs seriously. Or “organizations,” as they prefer. By contrast, “Clockers” offers ethnographic detail on the day-to-day economics of street dealing. Turf pride and drug profit do not matter to Lee in 2015, or they’re deemed unfit for either satire or more serious treatment. A nihilist implication is nothing is at stake.
Lee and Willmott do not dignify the Spartans and Trojans with motives. The men of Englewood are reduced to their dicks once Lysistrata succeeds in “literally shutting down the penis grid,” as a strip club owner bitches. Mounting an armory incursion to unlock the chastity belts of Lysistrata’s army, the foiled and dumbstruck Old Duke (Steve Harris) wonders: “What is the true meaning of life?” It dawns on Miss Helen: “You don’t know.”
Why do they shoot each other? What causes this black man to kill that black man? I think the only gang-related death occurring in the film’s time frame is due to bad aim, an off-camera shooting of 11-year-old Patti. “Niggas Can’t Shoot So Babies Get Whacked,” testifies Cannon in “Pray 4 My City.” At least “Chi-Raq” is conscientious about portraying the public rites for mourning and memorializing victims. Lee casts local family members for non-speaking roles, and beautifully recreates terribly sad events based on news reports.
A Spike Lee Joint, as this filmmaker likes to label his works, typically contains black history lessons scored by Terence Blanchard with eloquent orchestral arrangements. “Bamboozled” is especially diligent in documenting blackface minstrelsy and cooning in popular culture. Elder characters often raise the consciousness of unschooled characters, as Miss Helen does with Lysistrata. Miss Helen presides over a neighborhood meeting place called the House of Common Sense and Home of Proper Propaganda, named after a Harlem bookstore frequented by Malcolm X.
But “Chi-Raq” teaches little. Selective statistics compare American death tolls in Chicago, Iraq and Afghanistan. These are supplied on both the screen and on the soundtrack. Pfleger recites, with rewrites, his July 6th Facebook post about city shootings on the Fourth of July, 2015:
“Independence Weekend…….10 KILLED and 53 SHOT….and some are saying well it’s a little better than last July 4th…..REALLY????? so that becomes the standard? Tell that to the Families preparing Funerals this Morning or to those sitting in Hospital Rooms Praying for Recovery….. Let’s just Face it Chicago is out of Control…..Guns are everywhere and the 1st line of defense….Jobs are nowhere….People feel they are held hostage ….Black Life does not Matter…..and too many of our Communities have been abandoned……..while folks Downtown are still mad about a title of a Movie…..Give me a Damn Break….THIS IS Madness! maybe we need to do like the folks in Katrina and get up on our roof s and write HELP!!!!!!!!. Happy Independence…….SMH”
Most still photos of the local dead seen in marches and funeral services are authentic. For the opening montage in “Clockers” crime scenes are staged, as Lee explained to a BBC site: “To do that sequence we recreated real homicide photographs.” His first shot is an forensic close-up of a bloody entry wound. These are the corpses of young black males. Lee opens another film set in New York City, “Jungle Fever” (1991), with an onscreen text: “In memory of Yusuf K. Hawkins,” a 16-year-old African-American shot by whites on August 23, 1989.
Ancient lore relates Dionysius I of Syracuse wanted to know how politics worked in Athens, so Plato sent the tyrant the work of Aristophanes. Unsurprisingly, the once topical playwright does not afford Lee a handle on the city that likes to call itself the city that works. Democratically elected representatives are irrelevant in the local political cosmos Lee sketches.
Billboards for fictional 6th Ward Alderman Hambone are framed within five shots. “He’s the one who tried to block us from having a block party, and he’s also the one who tried to make ‘Chi-Raq’ ineligible for tax rebates and exemptions for shooting in Illinois,” Lee tipped the Boston Globe.
David Moore was the 17th Ward Alderman who initially blocked– and later OK’ed– a city permit for St. Sabina Church’s annual block party. Lee was co-host of the June 13th event. On July 27, 4th Ward alderman Will Burns backed a “No Tax Break for Chiraq” resolution introduced to the City Council Finance Committee. The day before, Pfleger posted on Facebook: “why not have a Hearing on what we need to do to stop this Genocide in our City? If you ask me this nothing but an Orchestrated Distraction to keep us from facing the REAL issues that contribute to the Violence.”
Other Democrats are only good for yuks. Dolmedes cracks about President Bill Clinton’s ejaculate on an intern’s dress. “The President of the United States of America called me a motherfucking sorry-ass, punk-ass biiitch,” the mayor complains to his commissioner. “Oh yes, it seems the First Lady has taken the oath and what’s worse, my wife has taken the oath.” Lee shot a TV spot of Rev. Jesse Jackson on a Harlem street talking about drugs during his 1988 presidential campaign.
A statue of the late Mayor Harold Washington, the first black elected to sit on the fifth floor of City Hall, is glimpsed in “Chi-Raq.” A Michael Jordan statute is treated reverently as well. Basketball fan Lee gives the legendary athlete a fraction more screen time.
When Lee was working on “Malcolm X,” he passed through Chicago on February 15th, 1992. Columbia College’s film department sponsored a question-and-answer session at the Music Box Theater. Fans urged him to come back and make films about Washington and Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party who was shot dead by police in 1969.
Lee ends “Chi-Raq” with an urgent onscreen “Wake Up.” He reprises the on-air signature of radio dj Senor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson) from Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.” Jackson calls his character “the voice of the community” on Stuyvesant Street in Brooklyn. He utters the first words of that 1989 film: “Waaake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Up ya wake! Up ya wake!… Get up, get up, get up, get up. Get on out there.” (In Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight,” Jackson’s character orders a mortally wounded Southerner: “Wake the fuck up! Wake up, white boy!”)
Black architect Flipper Purify (Wesley Snipes) delivers a morning volley of “Wake up”’s to his daughter in Lee’s “Jungle Fever” (1991). “Wake up!” is the order voiced by Laurence Fishburne’s campus activist character that punctuates Lee’s “School Daze” (1988). “Delacroix, wake up brother man,” prompts his white boss in “Bamboozled.” “I want to wake America up,” Delacroix later tells 18 white writers around a CNS conference table.
“What’s that `wake up’ thing that’s at the beginning and the end of some of your movies? Is there any meaning behind it?,” asked a member of the audience at Lee’s Music Box Theater event. According to a transcript of a recording, Lee answered: “You don’t know, huh? It means `Wake up!’… There’s a meaning behind it. It’s not random. It means `Wake up!’” There was a follow-up question: “Are there any subliminal messages in your films?” Lee’s retort: “The guy’s screaming `Wake up!” I don’t think that’s subliminal.”
Aside from film students suspecting a subtext in “Wake up!”, will Chicago get “Chi-Raq”? After his trailer drew fire, Lee tweeted: “GOOD MORNIN’ CHICAGO. A Few Chosen Words From Me, Spike Lee” with a Vimeo link. “Don’t get it twisted,” he repeats five times in the first minute and a half of this defensive video.
If “Chi-Raq” is a satire, as Lee insists, who are we supposed to laugh at, thereby bettering society or our grasp of its ills? Gangbangers with bad aim, or their lovers who borrow a gag from a Greek play? Or is Lee deploying our laughter towards a priest leading marches of mothers of the slain, a mayor boasting he’s married to a bi-racial ex stripper, or a National Guard general wearing Confederate flag underwear?
Lee’s most legible scene is not at all satiric. A melodramatic last-minute revelation by Miss Helen leads to another equally unexpected revelation by Chi-Raq. About her 10-year-old daughter Pam “shot through her left eye by a stray bullet” at the now demolished Cabrini Green projects, she recounts: “Back then it was a violation of the gang code to murder children.”
Miss Helen tells Chi-Raq his late father once did the right thing to redeem his wrong-doing. Her charged words bind the son to the father: “He tried to be a good man. You can be a good man. Be a good man. Be a good man. Be a good man. Be a good man. Be a good man. Be a good man.” If only her saying it could make him so. Her incantation is a disquieting echo of a slave training film titled “Be A Good One” in Willmott’s “C.S.A– The Confederate States of America.”
Where does Spike Lee see himself? In a self-critical turn he twice plays an everyman standing just beyond the yellow police tape at black-on-black homicides in “Clockers.” His work shirt is embroidered with “Dicky” the first time; in a similar bit at the end, he wears a different shirt that identifies him as “Chucky.” Detective Rocco Klein (Harvey Keitel) arrives and asks what happened. “Look, I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t here so I really can’t talk intelligently about it.”
Yet intelligently perceiving and provoking is what Lee attempts in many films, including “Chi-Raq.” “It is a very intellectual movie,” noted Ji Suk Yi, the social media contributor on WLS-Channel 7’s “Windy City Live.” Val Warner, the co-host of this weekday morning show, appears three times in “Chi-Raq” as a Channel 7 reporter.
“I was an instigator as a kid,” Lee informed a Playboy Magazine interviewer in 1991. “I just like to make people think, stir ‘em up. What’s wrong with that?” He defended himself in a 1990 op-ed piece the New York Times headlined “I Am Not an Anti-Semite”: “I think it’s reaching the point where I’m getting reviewed, not my films.” Ten years later he shared with Director’s Guild of America Magazine: “People seem to think I walk around in a perpetual state of black anger. I find that hilarious.”
“You get older and realize you can’t rant and rave 24/7,” Lee admitted to the New Statesman in 2007. “You have to pick and choose what you rant and rave about.”
Black-on-black criticism has preoccupied Lee since his indie debut “She’s Gotta Have It.” It continues in “School Daze,” set in a black college with the motto “Uplift the Race.” Self-segregating cliques of students spar over their differences in hair, airs, class, clothes and skin tone. Lee’s self-critique can entail casting himself in unbecoming roles, as he does in both films but not in “Chi-Raq.”
Wearing his “Crooklyn” hat, however, he makes a cameo in “Drop Squad,” a feature he executive-produced through his 40 Acres And A Mule Filmworks production company. Radical blacks abduct and deprogram assimilated blacks in this 1994 indie directed by D. Clark Johnson, expanded from his 1989 short “The Session” based on a story titled “The Deprogrammer.” Like “Bamboozled” and “Chi-Raq,” “Drop Squad” satirizes blacks betraying their own kind and those who would redeem them by any means necessary.
Lee appears as himself in a television commercial for the General Otis fried chicken franchise he directs. Confederate flags decorate the signage and packaging. At the store’s counter, Lee steps between two church women in their Sunday choir robes, and makes a reflexive pitch to the camera: “Announcer, school these sisters” about the new Gospel Pak special.
Eriq La Salle plays Bruford Jamison, Jr., the black exec at a white advertising agency who hires Lee. Bruford screens the spot at a family gathering. They don’t get it. “But, ma, it was a parody!” he insists in desperation. “We used to march to get away from stuff like that– what’s wrong with you boy?” scolds an aunt.
Bruford’s sister contacts the D.R.O.P. Squad, an underground group that stages interventions for “Deprogramming and Restoration of Pride.” Kevin Thomas at the Los Angeles Times called this “a reprehensible, indefensible dramatic device.” Bruford is kidnapped by blacker-than-thou militants. Strapped into a barber shop chair, the insufficiently black Bruford is subjected to several weeks of sleep deprivation and browbeating with Black History Month materials. Small glasses of water are tossed in his face.
“Misrepresented People” is the Stevie Wonder song kicking off “Bamboozled”: “We have been a misrepresented people… you must never be a misrepresented people.” Lee is ambivalent about self-inflicting images that could damage the African-American community. Jada Pinkett-Smith comments in that film’s press notes: “basically this film points the finger at ourselves and says we need to be responsible for what types of things we write and what types of roles we take.”
“You are selling your own people death,” rails single mother Iris Jeeter (Regina Taylor) in “Clockers” when accosting dealers. She does her best to keep them away from her 10-year-old son. “To me, a lot of difficulties we face as African-American people go back to the Black family,” Lee argued in a Jet Magazine cover story from 2012. “Look at the alarming rate of young Black men killing each other and in prison. I think a lot of that can be tied to the fact that daddy’s not home.” Father/son redemption is central to Lee’s “He Got Game” (1998). It almost comes as an afterthought in “Chi-Raq.”
Another diagnosis surfaces in “Lisa Trotter,” a 19-minute “Lysistrata” adaption set and shot in Los Angeles in 2010. Director Hawthorne James, writer Sam Greenlee (“The Spook Who Sat by the Door”) and lead actress L. Scott Caldwell are Chicago natives. Splitting “Lysistrata” into a first and a last name contemporizes Aristophanes’ lead character as the homonymous “Lisa Trotter.” She organizes a sex boycott at a sports bar, and tells her multi-ethnic co-conspirators: “The only way our men have to prove their manhood is to gangbang and make babies.”
Lee keeps coming back to “brothers killing other brothers.” Rescuing the black community from itself is a challenge he shoulders. Last year’s “Da’ Sweet Blood of Jesus” is his weirdest iteration; its black-on-black bloodletting is vampiric. Semi-automatics are a bigger threat than incisors, though. The Baptist preacher at Lil’ Peace of Heaven Church reminds his flock: “You don’t need no AK-47. You need Romans 8:21.”
“We’re the only race that shoots and kills themselves… It’s time we point the finger at ourselves,” sings Chicago-native Kevon Carter in “Chi-Raq.” “What’s the use of saying `Black Lives Matter‘ if we’re going to kill ourselves?” Steve Harris, an actor in the film with local roots too, adds: “What we are seeing now is self-destructive stupidity.”
Lee’s critique throws no light on the trigger-pullers. Like the one who put seven bullets into King Louie (Louis Johnson Jr.) on December 23rd at 83rd & Pulaski. Fifteen shots missed. This Chicago rapper– “To Live and Die in Chicago“– survived.
Six years ago, he introduced the expressions “Chiraq” and “Drillinois.” On the day the film titled “Chi-Raq” opened, December 4th, King Louie uploaded a rap video titled “Fuck Spike Lee.”
On December 28th this survivor told CNN: “The devil’s working overtime, that’s what’s going on in Chicago… Pray for our city.” “I Can’t Fall A Victim To Satan,” raps Nick Cannon in the beginning of “Chi-Raq.” Shooters are demonized, as a matter of fact. To paraphrase that convalescing artist who lives in Chicago, fuck satire.
Ultimately, this film is unserious about African-American murder and manhood, although the filmmaker is decidedly not. Lee sees an intractable tragedy on the south side of Chicago, and divines no fix and delivers no uplift. The humor dehumanizes. Ineptly, this ostensible satirist inflicts a farce on the city.
©2015 Bill Stamets
Tagged with: Aristophanes, Bamboozled, Chi-Raq, Chicago, Clockers, Drop Squad, Father Michael Pfleger, Fuck Spike Lee, Kevin Willmott, King Louie, Lysistrata, Nick Cannon, Pray 4 My City, Samuel L. Jackson, satire, Spike Lee, Teyonah Parris
Saga of a Surrogate: “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2”
Posted in Uncategorized by Bill Stamets on November 22, 2015
Directed by Francis Lawrence.
Written by Peter Craig and Danny Strong, from an adaptation by Suzanne Collins.
Produced by Nina Jacobson and Jon Kilik.
Acted by Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, Willow Shields, Sam Claflin, Jena Malone, Stanley Tucci.
Distributed by Lionsgate.
Running time: 136 minutes.
MPAA rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and for some thematic material.
After an act of self-sacrifice to save the life of her younger sister and then surviving a civic blood rite, 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is recruited to serve as an icon of insurrection in “The Hunger Games,” a four-film series (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015) adapted from three novels (2008, 2009, 2010) by Suzanne Collins. “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay– Part 2” concludes a dystopic saga preoccupied with statecraft conducted by spectacle.
For a primer on political ethics, Katniss figures as a stand-in and standard-bearer. Caught in the apparatus of appearances, she will fake looks that turn into the real things.
Much blood is shed, mostly off-camera, in this young-adult franchise that’s rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America. Teen-on-teen killing and tyrannicide share the screen with a chaste wartime romance. Francis Lawrence, who also directed the second and third Hunger Games films, now resolves these plot lines in a disquieting civics lesson and, for a coda, a domestic idyll from the madding crowd. A polis is redeemed and a new family begins.
Downplayed in this installment: satirizing the eccentrically coiffed and coutured elite found in the earlier films, where an oleaginous TV host, Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci), preens as a regime toady. Screenwriters Peter Craig and Danny Strong prolong the running time to 136 minutes, thanks to superfluous action sequences. Like that chase in a sewer wherein naked mutant amphibian-faced flesh-eating albino bipeds pursue Katniss and comrades.
The four films comprising this serial link chronologically, free of cliff-hanger endings to bridge episodes. Flashbacks are limited to incidents within the storyline and lifetimes of characters. They live in a society using a calendar with no days, months, years or centuries identified. Geographically, viewers get no bearings, as if the action occurs in terra incognita. Historically, there is one national anniversary. No ancestors are named. Nor are any books, creeds, myths or faiths ever mentioned.
Seventy-five years ago in the English-speaking nation of Panem, the 13 Districts rebelled against the Capitol. Parallels to the 13 colonies once in transatlantic revolt against King George III are nonexistent. The word “existant,” however, appears on an edict glimpsed in the first Hunger Games film. The Latin blog Pathetic Mistranslations mocks the semi-literate Latinate legalese penned on that parchment. Imperial Rome seems to inspire the naming of characters in Panem. Chariots play a ceremonial role in this country named after panem et circenses (Latin for bread and circuses), as Roman satirist Juvenal termed governance by mass distraction. When the one-percent over-indulge, waiters serve a blue beverage to induce vomiting and permit more fine dining.
Panem’s defining `circus’ is the legacy of the quashed revolt, as recounted in an official video narrated by President Snow (Donald Sutherland): “When the traitors were defeated, we swore as a nation we would never know this treason again. And so it was decreed that each year the various districts of Panem would offer up, in tribute, one young man and woman to fight to the death in a pageant of honor, courage and sacrifice. The lone victor, bathed in riches, would serve as a reminder of our generosity and our forgiveness. This is how we remember our past. This is how we safeguard our future.”
The Treaty of the Treason adds: “In penance for their uprising, each district shall offer up a male and female between the ages of 12 and 18 at a public `Reaping.’ These Tributes shall be delivered to the custody of The Capitol. And then transferred to a public arena where they will Fight to the Death, until a lone victor remains. Henceforth and forevermore this pageant shall be know as The Hunger Games.”
The first film, titled “The Hunger Games” and directed by Gary Ross, begins with Katniss from District 12 dutifully attending the Reaping with her 12-year-old sister Prim (Willow Shields). Prim is picked in the lottery. Katniss volunteers to take her place, as the rules permit. This is just the first brave move by Katniss to protect Prim. In “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay– Part 2” Prim disobeys an emergency evacuation order prior to a bombardment in order to rescue her cat. Katniss redoubles her original efforts and rescues both Prim and her cat too. Prim’s cats always hiss at Katniss, who trash talks back. Yet throughout the series she is saving them.
The Hunger Games air live every year. Without commercial interruption, it would appear. In this one-channel country, must-see TV from the Capitol comes with onscreen alerts stating “Mandatory Viewing.” Indeed, the tagline for the latest film commands “The world will be watching.” “What if everyone just stopped watching?” wonders Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth), Katniss’s hunting pal and prospective love interest, in the 2012 film. “No one watches and they don’t have a game. It’s as simple as that.” Not really. It will take more than a hypothetical viewer boycott to unplug the grotesque broadcast.
“The Hunger Games” DVD contains an interview with David Leviathan, co-author of the novel “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” and an editor at Scholastics Inc., who relates how Suzanne Collins first got the idea for her story: “One night she was flipping channels on TV, flipping between war coverage and reality TV.”
As for the screen adaptation, Leviathan continues: “We knew that the violence was there as a critique of violence… This is a book that could so easily be made the wrong way, and you really had to be careful to find the right people who would make it exactly the right way, in that it would not become the thing that it’s criticizing.”
Lionsgate president of production Alli Shearmur assumes the risk of depicting adolescent slaughter: “They are forced to compete in this manner, so if we’re celebrating them killing one another, we’re doing exactly what the Capitol is doing. So as a movie, if we shot it that way, we’d be shooting it very cynically and we’d not be shooting it or telling the story that in any way conveys we understand Suzanne Collins’ novel.”
Director Gary Ross, interviewed on a “The Hunger Games” making-of featurette, deals with the quandary of manipulating imagery about image manipulation: “I could never let you feel that this was staged in any way… if you shoot it like a slick glossy Hollywood movie with like very groovily choreographed camera moves… if you loose that sense of verite then you really loose the feeling of reality… You’re turning into the Capitol; you’re not examining the Capitol anymore.”
“The phrase I always had on the set was `this feels too much like a movie,’ `I don’t want this to feel like a movie,’ ‘It’s too much like a movie,'” recalls Ross. “But that was my mantra.” He says he aimed to distance his “verite shooting style” from the seamlessly designed showcase of sacrificial murder as packaged for Panem audiences in the Capitol and the surrounding Districts.
“The games don’t mean anything,” claims Katniss in “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.” “They only mean to scare us.” She fearlessly outwits the Capitol. In the first film, she and her fellow Tribute from District 12, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), threaten to commit suicide together by swallowing poison berries on camera, instead of one killing the other. For tactical reasons and authentic feelings, their alliance segues into a romance. The next time they find themselves in the giant domed arena, new allies help her escape to the subterranean rebel stronghold.
Omnipresent cameras throughout Panem let President Snow monitor Katniss’s public appearances on the traditional post-game tour. Victors travel to each District to greet increasingly resistive citizens. “Fear does not work as long as they have hope, and Katniss Everdeen is giving them hope,” Snow notices. “She’s become a beacon of hope for the rebellion, and she has to be eliminated.”
Rebels hack into Panem’s signal to air their own propaganda videos called “propos” by their creator, Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Formerly the Head Gamemaker for Snow, this turncoat now manages the image of the insurgency. My favorite scenes in the third and fourth films show Katniss learning how to play a mascot uniting “the masses” of the Districts.
Going off script, she inadvertently generates the best footage yet. “I couldn’t have staged it better myself,” marvels Plutarch. “And whatever she’s doing, we conceived it,” says rebellion President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore). “It was our plan all along… I want everyone to know whatever game she’s playing, she’s playing for us.” Katniss will ultimately outplay Snow’s would-be successor.
A Hunger Games survivor with PTSD tells Katniss: “You’re… a little hard to swallow. The whole tacky romance drama. And the defender of the hopeless act. Even though it’s not an act, which makes it even more unbearable.” Once the invasion of the Capitol starts, Plutarch will deploy a Star Squad to upload video of Katniss in action. She schemes to assassinate Snow on her own: “No more cameras, no more propos, no more games.”
Back in the second film, Katniss is coached: “From now on, your job is to be a distraction so people forget what the real problems are.” Politics by distraction is deconstructed by the fourth film. “If we die, let it be for a cause and not a spectacle,” urges a rebel commander. Once Snow is deposed, the interim leader proclaims: “Welcome to the new Panem… our free Panem… more than a mere spectacle.”
Staging the public execution of a tyrant looks right and righteous for the last reel, but Kandiss the archer thwarts that populist payoff. A few scenes earlier, before rebel forces overtake the Capitol, Snow instructs its privileged residents: “Our enemy is not like us. They do not share our values. They have never known our comfort and our sophistication. And they despise us for it.”
Snow’s rhetoric for demonizing citizens of the outlying Districts sounds like certain diagnoses of Islamicist resentment of Western secular democracy and urbanity. Two days after Islamic State issued its communique regarding “the Blessed Paris Invasion on the French Crusaders,” French president François Hollande declared: “France is at war… The barbarians attacking it want to disfigure it.” Targeted are “our values, our youth and our way of life.”
The global entertainment known as The Hunger Games imagines grassroots guerrilla freedom-fighters. Toss in a few unprincipled Machiavellian players to boo. Unsaid or unclear are “our values.” What freedoms do all the martyrs in the series foresee?
Plebeian citizens of the thirteen districts are uniformly garbed in drab homespun browns, greys and blues. In the Capitol individualism is trivialized as idiosyncratic ornamentation. Manifested in outlandish hairstyles, makeup, clothing and jewelry. As if self-fashioning evidences self-governing. We see these over-served people do little– other than watch their Hunger Games on unbelievably big screens.
Making things work: The Martian, The Walk, Sicario, 99 Homes
Posted in Uncategorized by Bill Stamets on October 6, 2015
Four new films– “The Martian,” “The Walk,” “Sicario” and “99 Homes”– are factually informed fictions of efficacy. Each one is a tribute to ingenuity in many guises. Characters obey laws of physics on Mars and atop the World Trade Center, and break other laws in Mexico and Orlando.
Four filmmakers impart distinct agendas to plots about making things work. Towards what ends? Getting home to Earth, walking on a wire between the Twin Towers, assassinating a narco-cartel CEO, and profiting from foreclosures to recover a home of one’s own. Apart from the pragmatics of technique and teamwork, the writers and directors are moralizing– more or less intently– in their respective narratives.
“The Martian” is set in an optimistic near future of robust funding of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) by Congress. Ares III, the third mission to Mars, goes awry. Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is left behind in a blinding dust storm after his malfunctioning sensors transmit no vital signs. “The Martian” details the dire task at hand. “He needs to go home home,” as earthling Elliot (Henry Thomas) explains in Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” (1982). To survive, Mark will re-engineer more than a Speak & Spell toy.
Director Ridley Scott (“Prometheus”) directs a science-is-really-cool screenplay that Drew Goddard adapted from a techie novel by Andy Weir titled “The Martian.” The son of particle physicist, Weir says he began his computer science career at age 15 at Sandia National Laboratories in his hometown of Livermore, California. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), located in Livermore, figures in the book and the film. He later wrote code for the real-time strategy game “Warcraft II” and worked as an Android programmer.
Weir begins his novel, originally posted as a online serial in 2012, with Mark writing: “LOG ENTRY: SOL 6. I’m pretty much fucked. That’s my considered opinion. Fucked. Six days into what should be the greatest two months of my life and it’s turned into a nightmare… So yeah, I’m fucked.” Or, as Val Kilmer’s character turns the phrase upon departing Mars in Antony Hoffman film “Red Planet” (2000): “Fuck this planet!”
“The Martian” splices themes of two films about voyagers imperiled by vehicular collisions. In “Gravity,” directed by Alfonso Cuarón, debris from a decommissioned Russian satellite hits a NASA shuttle in a nearby orbit. In the Indian Ocean a stray shipping container breaches the hull of a yacht in “All Is Lost,” directed by J.C. Chandor. The mechanics of surviving lend urgency to both of these 2013 releases.
As Mark verbifies in “The Martian”: ”I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.” Damon also played an intrepid tech improviser in Neill Blomkamp’s “Elysium” (2013), a sci-fi film set in 2154 about the ultimate in class-based health care. Its costly access is literally orbital– limited to residents of Elysium, a deluxe space station circling Earth. Terminally ill, Damon’s character engineers a life-saving treatment for other doomed commoners.
Earth is “vastly overpopulated” reads an opening title in “Elysium.” That updates the opening voiceover of “Red Planet,” set in 2050, stating “we had begun to overpopulate” our planet in 2000. The fix was to terraform Mars, then move there.
Wernher Von Braun proposed we colonize Mars in an October 24, 1960 speech in Dallas. The former German rocket scientist had joined NASA when the agency was created two years earlier and took over the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Man has learned to live and multiply so proficiently that if he keeps it up for another 500 years he won’t have a place to sleep because there’ll be `standing room only’ on this planet,” Braun told the Independent Petroleum Association of America. Under the headline “Colonies on Mars Seen Answer to Birth Boom,” the Associated Press reported: “Dr. Wernher Von Braun said Monday the United States could put a man on Mars and keep him alive longer than a native in the tropics could exist in the Arctic.”
Mars colonization is underway in John Carpenter’s “Ghosts of Mars” (2001), set in 2176, and Andrzej Bartkowiak’s “Doom” (2005), set in 2046. In the latter two films archaeologists inadvertently unleash lethal pushback by indigenous life forms. Visitors from Earth are not attacked, though, in Byron Haskin’s “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” (1964) and Brian De Palma’s “Mission to Mars” (2000).
Mark is the only sign of sentient life on Mars in “The Martian.” His psyche is a cypher to NASA’s director of Mars missions back on Earth. Before making radio contact with the marooned Mark, Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) observes: “He’s 50 million miles away from home, he thinks he’s totally alone, he thinks we gave up on him– I mean, what does that do to a man, psychologically? What the hell is he thinking right now?” In one of too many simplistic cuts, the next shot answers. Mark is blasting vintage disco music.
Weir is not into nuance. “The only reason I write is to entertain,” he admits in a Google Talk. “I never have a point. I never have a moral. I never want to do anything other than make the reader go `Cool!’ and that’s it.” In the last scene of “The Martian” Mark is back on Earth briefing fledgling astronauts on what to do when things go wrong on another planet: “You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem. Then you solve the next one. And then the next. If you solve enough problems you get to come home.”
It was not all about engineering when Mark worked on his homecoming. Trained as a botanist, he found a way to grow potatoes on Mars. Besides exchanging emails with NASA and JPL, he got one from the president of the United States. “The coolest one. Coolest, though. The coolest one I got was from University of Chicago, my alma mater,” he shares. “They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially colonized it. So technically, I colonized Mars.”
Mark figures he must be the first Martian. And in a further flight of theorizing– with nothing to do with orbital dynamics– he decides under international law he’s a pirate to boot.
“The Walk” salutes a trespasser. The lengthy tagline for the film is: “Twelve people have walked on the moon. Only one has ever, or will ever, walk in the immense void between the World Trade Center towers.” That one risk-taker receives an affirming paean fixated on his methodical planning to lessen the odds of gravity putting him in an early grave.
With civic sentiment on his sleeve, Robert Zemeckis directs a screenplay he co-wrote with Christopher Browne based on “To Reach the Clouds,” the 2002 book by Philippe Petit. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays this French-born wire-walking artiste who put on an illegal show 110 stories above lower Manhattan on August 7, 1974.
Philippe regularly addresses the camera for garrulous and self-congratulatory exposition, in contrast to Mark voices his log entries with sarcastic self-deprecation in “The Martian.” A charming trickster, Philippe is more introspective, make that narcissistic, than Mark and his skills are more screen-friendly. I cringed at the sight of his footwork during his playful walks between the Twin Towers, even though Alan Silvestri’s uplifting score dispenses with anticipated notes of suspense.
The press notes bill “The Walk” as “A love letter to the World Trade Center.” (So call “The Martian” a valentine by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.) Philippe’s feat may feel like a Paris-accented segment from the old ABC show “Wide World of Sports” show, but Zemeckis packages his parting message with patriotic tropes familiar from his allegorical one-man saga “Forrest Gump” (1994).
“The Walk” renders the World Trade Center as monuments by indirectly referring to their ruins. The death of the Twin Towers is implied by valorizing the date of August 7, 1974 as their birth in the eyes of New Yorkers. Last reel shots of uniformed NYPD and FDNY responders to Philippe’s stunt evoke their comrades at that same address on September 11, 2001.
Philippe imagines he’s transformed the Twin Towers: “They’re different.” His girlfriend Annie (Charlotte Le Bon) wonders, “So did you bring them to life?” One local boasts: “Now every New Yorker I talk to now says they love these towers.” Philippe changes his citizenship. “I was proud to become a New Yorker,” he narrates. He also cherishes his special visitor’s pass to the observation deck of the World Trade Center. Its expiration date is filled in as “Forever.”
Zemeckis closing shot embraces a sun-burnished World Trade Center, circa 1974, with a slow fade to black. Martin Scorsese’s coda to “Gangs of New York” (2002) likewise frames the World Trade Center in an elegiac light. The takeaway line from “The Walk”: “Look at that. We did it. We showed the world that anything’s possible.” Not only can someone do what Philippe did on a wire, but others can do what al-Qaeda did with two Boeing 767s.
“Sicario” takes on the post-9/11 targeting of so-called narco-terrorists by the United States. Covert operators play a tough and dirty game of offense against drug cartels in northern Mexico. Denis Villeneuve (“Prisoners” and “Incendies”) directs an incisive, screenplay by Taylor Sheridan for a unsettling procedural. Cinematographer Roger Deakins indelibly surveils the unforgiving borderlands infiltrated by traffickers of drugs and migrants. Composer Jóhann Jóhannsson suffuses the vexed terrain with an ominous thrum. Adrenaline-driven scoring cues kinetic action sequences.
The film’s title predates by many centuries the creation of the Office of Homeland Security on September 20, 2001 and the Homeland Security Council that convened five weeks later. Scholars of antiquity variously identify the Sicarii as first-century Jewish dagger-men (from the Latin sica for small dagger) as we’ll as assassins, insurrectionists or terrorists. In the 1980’s Colombian cartels deployed hit men called sicarios (paid assassins).
“Is Narco-Violence in Mexico Terrorism?” ask anthropologists Howard Campbell and Tobin Hansen in the Bulletin of Latin American Research. Defining “narco-violence” as “intra-cartel, inter-cartel, cartel vs. government” violence, the co-authors weigh their wording: “Yet, if narco traffickers were labelled ‘terrorists’ then militaristic counter-terrorist measures might become more politically acceptable to the general public.” If “Sicario” has any agenda, it is precisely to complicate that issue.
I recall hearing “terrorist” and “Homeland Security” maybe once or twice in “Sicario” but the dialogue includes no serious or sustained points using either expression. Nor does Sheridan’s screenplay draw on items like this one posted at FoxNews.com in 2013: “Mexican cartels hiring US soldiers as hit men.” Five years earlier one cartel reportedly put up a banner (a narcomantas) over a Mexican thoroughfare that read: “Members and Ex-members of the Military, Los Zetas Wants You. We offer good wages, food, and benefits for your family. …We pay in dollars. We offer benefits, life insurance, and a house for your family and children. Quit living in the poor neighborhood and riding buses. You choose, the latest model car or pickup truck. What more do you want?” (Original in Spanish.) Militarization has reached the point where narcotanques is a new coinage for heavily armored “narco-tanks” that travel openly on Mexican highways in cartel convoys.
For a Mexican point-of-view on cartel violence, two realist dramas portray local victims: “Miss Bala” (2011) by Gerardo Naranjo, and “Heli” (2013) by Amat Escalante. “Sicario” contains a side storyline about a cop in northern Mexico. The film’s ending at his son’s soccer game– with a timeout for the nearby sirens and automatic weapons fire– is a compelling, if dispiriting, masterstroke by Villeneuve. The players and bystanders soon turn their attention back to the game.
Villeneuve affords his viewers the perspective of Kate Macer (Emily Blunt, “Edge of Tomorrow”). She is an FBI agent leading a kidnap-response-team. The opening scene takes her to a suburban Arizona house where tortured and executed corpses wrapped in plastic are hidden inside the walls. After a northern Mexican cartel is implicated, Kate’s supervisor introduces her to Matt Graver (Josh Brolin, “No Country For Old Men”). He has indefinite ties to the Department of Defense and is accompanied by a Colombian “consultant” named Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro, “Traffic”). Bearded commandos just back from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan will join Matt’s operation, a less than transparent task force with sketchy oversight.
Kate is brought onboard for the sake of inter-agency protocol. Her presence somehow ensures a mission that will end at the mansion of Sonoran drug lord will go “by the book.” All she is supposed to do is sign a paper saying so when it’s over. Until then, it’s her duty to watch. And so that’s what we do too.
One night at a U.S. military base right by the border, a soldier asks Kate: “Want to see something?” He takes her to the roof and points south. Is it fireworks or a firefight?
“Nothing will make sense to your American ears, and you will doubt everything we do,” Alejandro advises Kate. During the questioning of detained Mexicans, she cannot figure out the objective: “What are we looking for?” Matt simply instructs: “Just keep watching.” Later she’s told: “Learn, that’s why you’re here.” Like a shrewd screenwriter, Matt maneuvers the diegesis. What Kate– and Villeneuve’s viewers– need to know comes by a slow reveal, knowledge allocated for a controlled panic.
Kate’s eyes and ears take in more than she can square with her training. Alejandro and Matt lead her deep into compromising muck of tactics. They prove to be highly effective in taking down a cartel CEO notorious for such atrocities as dropping a prosecutor’s daughter in a vat of acid.
“Sicario” has no Socratic dialogue about the war on drugs. Villeneuve and Sheridan are hardly running a seminar here to sort out ideas of a just war, the just use of force, and force short of war. Nonetheless, their mise-en-scene articulates the fog of this awful war. High stakes call for extra-legal measures, implies “Sicario.” Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012) posed a similar rationale for assassinating Osama bin Laden in the war on terror.
Alejandro’s parting tip to Kate, more vulnerable than ever to a sicario aiming at her: “You should move to a small town where the rule of law still exists.”
“99 Homes” maps inter-locking interests in Orlando, Florida where bankers, judges, sheriffs, county commissioners, real estate agents and eviction crews oversee the misery of one-time homeowners downscaled into debt refugees. Director and editor Ramin Bahrani and his co-writer Amir Naderi offer a drama of discovery founded on wide-ranging research. “I’m going to figure it out,” states their protagonist at the start of his learning curve.
As in “Sicario, “99 Homes” shows an exemplar of efficacy schooling another character and the audience in the workings of the world. Here a loaded vocabulary of “predatory lending” and “toxic credit” replaces terms prefixed with “narco” in “Sicario.”
Rick Carver (Michael Shannon, “Take Shelter”) of Rick Carver Real Estate evicts Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield, “The Amazing Spider Man”) then hires this young carpenter and single dad to evict others. At a Chicago screening, Shannon said Garfield met a man in Florida who did that. Then he had to evict his best friend, who later forgave him after finding work on an eviction crew himself.
Driving though a residential area, Rick asks, “What do you see out there?” Dennis replies, “I see homes.” Rick sees more: “I just saw nine opportunities to make money in the last five blocks. There were three properties without mailboxes. One with an overgrown lawn and no car in the drive. Two with white signs taped to the windows. And three with shiny new floor knobs and lock boxes. If you can get attuned to seeing those kinds of opportunities, then maybe you can up get off your hands and knees and really start working for me.”
Heading to the posh home of hedge fund manager with a foreclosed mortgage, Rick advises Dennis: “Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open and maybe you’ll learn something this time.” Dennis indeed learns, and it makes him ill. Like Kate in “Sicario,” he cannot reconcile ethics and efficacy.
“99 Homes” and “Sicario” critique intricacies of political economy, whereas Newtonian logistics underwrite the plots of “The Martian” and “The Walk.” Consumers play a role: “99 Homes” faults self-deluded homeowners with unreasonable goals and “Sicario” blames cocaine users.
The screenplay by Bahrani and Naderi is less blunt than “Kill Bankers”– the message a foreclosed Floridian spray painted on his living room wall. Less loquacious than Philippe in “The Walk,” Rick spells out his life philosophy with allusions to the deluge, bilge pumps and drowning-in-debt. After asking Dennis if he goes to church, Rick declares: “Only 1 in a 100 is going to get on that ark, son. And every other poor soul is going to drown. I’m not going to drown.” He lectures to his conflicted employee: “America doesn’t bail out the losers. America was built by bailing out winners. By rigging a nation of the winners, for the winners, by the winners.”
Bahrani’s drama “At Any Price” (2012) observed an Iowa farm family in crisis. “During the six months I spent with farmers in the American Midwest,” he related in his press notes, he kept hearing a “mantra” among farmers pressured by agribusiness: “Expand or die.” That capitalist imperative fits a Sonoran drug cartel and Rick Carver Real Estate too.
Bahrani ends “99 Homes” with Dennis undermining a key deal for Rick by admitting to fraudulently filing a backdated document for him at the Orlando court house. He knows enough how things work to make the right thing happen. In her last scene in “Sicario” Kate likewise plans to make a break. “I want to tell everyone what you did,” she tells Alejandro. “That would be a major mistake,” counters this quite efficacious sicario. Villeneuve takes that chance and tells us.
Tagged with: 99 Homes, efficacy, film, Sicario, The Martian, The Walk
American Ultra: a covert CIA workplace comedy with a body count
Posted in Uncategorized by Bill Stamets on August 20, 2015
directed by Nima Nourizadeh
written by Max Landis
acted by Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Connie Britton, Topher Grace
“American Ultra”– there’s no tie-in with American Spirit smokes– co-stars Jesse Eisenberg (“Adventureland,” “Zombieland”) and Kristen Stewart (“Adventureland,” “Twilight”) as Mike and Phoebe, a marijuana-inhaling, flannel-wearing pair on the verge of engaging if his panic attacks permit. Many will die in this “action comedy” before uncovering the prior careers of this stoner couple.
Screenwriter Max Landis– writer-director of “Me Him Her” and co-writer of “Chronicle”– structures a two-tier plot about Human Resources in the Central Intelligence Agency. In the sterile halls of Langley, Virginia two suits piss on each other’s turf. Victoria (Connie Britton) and Adrian (Topher Grace) run two secret Ultra experiments, something likely inspired by a stoner’s wacked reading of the Wikipedia entry about the CIA’s legendary MK Ultra program.
The Wise Man project is called Victoria’s $400 million “stillborn baby” surviving in the person of “a crazy scary rabbit puppy” who Adrian wants to “put down” by deploying programmed psychopath subjects from the competing Tough Guy program. She calls these screwed-up sleeper operatives “American citizens.” He insists these “assets” are “government property.” Termination protocol is lethally literal in this federal sector.
Out in sylvan Liman, West Virginia (as lensed in Louisiana) under-employed low-achievers Mike and Phoebe work at the Cash N Carry convenience store and a bail bonds office, respectively. He scribbles panels for his superhero Apollo Ape graphic novel. She is busy as his all-around enabler.
Victoria comes incognito to Mike’s counter and recites a coded message: “Chariot Progressive. Mandelbrot Set Is In Motion. Echo Briar Has Been Breached. We Are Fielding The Ball.” He is truly clueless. She leaves. Later that night he confronts two shadowy characters attaching something with a blinking red light in the wheel well of his beater in the parking lot. Cue extreme close-ups to Mike’s eye and a torrent of images racing over his mind’s eye.
“I hit him with a spoon and his lungs exploded,” a stunned Mike relates afterwards to Phoebe. He also turned their guns against them. It’s just the first of the bloody fatalities that Nima Nourizadeh (“Project X”) directs with adolescent glee.
We see Mike drawing his super-ape adventures in a notebook. End credit sequences expand his visuals into full-screen animation. Cartoonish certainly describes how Landis scripts implausible intra-agency protocol at the CIA. Yet, other passages are touching, even sort of smart. One night in a cloud of dope smoke, Mike and Phoebe watch an emergency crew down the road handle the aftermath of an accident. A car hit a tree.
Between tokes, Mike shares his revery about the tree that has always been there on the side of the road doing nothing but being in a state of “stopping” and a car that it stops that has always been “moving” since rolling off the assembly line. He sees the tree is “destroying this beautiful, like really beautiful and fast-moving thing.” The car. It’s symbolic. “I think I’m that tree and I think you’re the car and I think I’m stopping you.” Tearfully he asks Phoebe: “Am I that tree?” Later she realizes she may have been the tree stopping his car in life.
“What if I’m, like, a robot?” wonders Mike, when his unconscious super-killer skill set is rebooted by Victoria, just in time to save his life and his girlfriend’s. I admit it sounds like he’s channeling cannabis again, but these dithering lines of self-doubt are almost semi-deep. Here Landis reminds me of the paranoid impasse for Truman (Jim Carrey) in “The Truman Show” (1998). Both characters are stuck in small towns thanks to embedded phobias that make leaving there unthinkable.
“American Ultra” is a wacked-out take on the trope of government-trained killers with ultra covert identities. Far more fun than “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) and “Telefon” (1978), this workplace comedy gets silly in its CIA plotting but is a fine pretext for a hit of multiplex A/C this August.
Tagged with: American Ultra, Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Nima Nourizadeh
Stylish spy trio thwarts Nazi nuke sale in sixties NBC spinoff
directed by Guy Ritchie
written by Guy Ritchie and Lionel Wigram
based on the television series by Sam Rolfe
acted by Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Debicki, Luca Calvani, Sylvester Groth, Jared Harris, Hugh Grant
presented and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
Three cool spies ply their trade during the Cold War of 1963. For the big screen, Guy Ritchie (“Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels”) packages a cheeky backgrounder on the “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” vintage television series.
That 105-episode NBC series started its three-and a-half year run in 1964. Tonal shifts ensued across five producers and five time slots. Prompted by the popular James Bond films, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” belonged to a broadcast fad. American networks booked eight different programs on the 1965-1966 season. Its co-stars were celebs: Robert Vaughn was a guest speaker at Notre Dame, where he forecast our Vietnam policy triggering World War III; and David McCallum did a guest gig NBC’s rock dance show “Hullabaloo.”
In his hyphenate roles as the director– and a writer and a producer– Ritchie never spells out the acronym in the original title. In the last two seconds of his film he introduces “Uncle” (without the five abbreviating periods) as a code word. Spoiler alert: a sequel is conceivable. As for “The Man” in the title: there are in fact two men and one woman in play, as in Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films. “I’m drawn to that male-to-male dynamic as kind of a genre unto itself,” he reveals in his press notes.
Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill, “Man of Steel,” “Immortals”) is a CIA agent. Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer, “The Lone Ranger,” “The Social Network”) is a KGB agent. “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” opens with the pair meeting cute to extract Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander, “Ex Machina,” “Testament of Youth”), who appears to be an auto mechanic in East Berlin.
Napoleon and Illya soon learn their respective governments are now secretly collaborating in order to keep a nuclear warhead out of the clutches of ex-Nazis. Gaby’s long-lost father– “Hitler’s favorite rocket scientist,” according to his dossier– is aiding the Vinciguerra Shipping and Aerospace Company in Rome. Gaby is key to getting to him.
Most of the action is set in the deluxe estate and high tech lair of the Vinciguerra family empire. Their name may derive from Vincenzo Vinciguerra, the Italian neo-fascist terrorist from the National Vanguard and New Order who was convicted for a 1972 car bombing with C4 linked to a NATO munitions cache. Or maybe not. More legible are the sly riffs on James Bond’s savor faire. Vocals by Nina Simone, Louis Prima and Roberta Flack are well chosen.
There’s much to like in the wry patter, hip decor, swinging couture, retro tunes and twisty schemes in this forgettably light summer fare. The plot is hardly serious about the computer disk with secrets for enriching uranium to win the arms race or install a new reich, but Ritchie offers flirty outwitting by three attractive agents in killer outfits.
Tagged with: Guy Ritchie, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Fantastic Four: something green in fourth dimension empowers twentysomethings with new career options
Posted in Uncategorized by Bill Stamets on August 9, 2015
directed by Josh Trank
written by Josh Trank, Simon Kinberg, Jeremy Slater
based on characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
acted by Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Michael B. Jordan, Reg E. Cathey, Toby Kebbell
distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
After accidental exposure to something green in the so-called fourth dimension, four twentysomethings are freakishly empowered with new career options in “Fantastic Four.”
This vintage Marvel Comic gets a screen adaptation that’s less cartoonish and self-conscious than others in Marvel’s busy franchise. No doubt by contract, director Josh Trank insinuates the obligatory sneer at the scientific-corporate-military nexus.
The adolescent-at-any-age demographic for this product may not expect its 31-year-old director to opt for a straightforward tone. Trank deliberately decelerates after the kinetic opening logo that trademarks every Marvel screen property. A truly stunning, if fleeting, special effect will come later when CGI action peaks at an inter-dimensional vortex.
Trank and co-screenwriters Simon Kinberg and Jeremy Slater create an origin story for characters originated by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1961: Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Girl, Human Torch and the Thing. After vanquishing an evildoer who nearly did in Earth, Trank’s foursome is introduced to a secret government research center on a mountain. It’s nameless and off-the books. Their military escort tells his new employers: “Call it whatever you want.” Naming the facility after their late mentor Franklin Storm is considered.
In the film’s last minute, the four will decide on a name for themselves. Rejected are The Human Torch & the Torchettes, The Big Brain & His Neurons, and The Big Brain & Her Neurons. Two Guys, a Girl & the Thing that Nobody Wanted is a no-go. At last, the alliterative two-word title of the film you just watched appears on screen and the credits roll.
Trank’s 2012 film “Chronicle” adopted a handheld docu-diary format to observe three Seattle high school seniors getting super-powers– plus ethical problems about using them. Jung, Plato and Schopenhauer get name dropped. As in the different versions of “Fantastic Four,” that trio’s freak powers are acquired by chance. What leads the Marvel characters to their transformative exposures differs.
In the original Cold War-era comic book Susan Storm– who morphs into Invisible Girl– urges pilot Ben Grimm– the Thing-to-be– to launch their untested spaceship at once, “unless we want the Commies to beat us!” After getting dosed with cosmic radiation, Ben the Thing philosophizes: “We’ve gotta use that power to help mankind, right?”
The Fantastic characters were not only competing with Sputnik satellite launches by the Soviets in 1957, Marvel was catching up with DC Comics that convened seven of its superheroes into the Justice League of America comic book in 1960.
In the inferior 2005 film directed by Tim Story– titled “Fantastic Four” too– the same characters (different cast) board a corporately owned & operated spaceship for a risky flight into the path of “a high energy cosmic storm.” “Exposure” like that “might have triggered the evolution of early planetary life,” theorized Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd).
The proposed payoff: “fundamentally advanc[ing] our knowledge of the human genome. Cure countless diseases, extend human life, give kids a chance to live longer, stronger, healthier…” The downside due to bad shielding: an outer space dosing of all four, plus one who turned into an antagonist aiming to annihilate Earth.
In the 2015 “re-imagining,” per industry parlance, Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey, “House of Cards,” “The Wire”) extols an “inter-dimensional” expedition towards “a whole new world which can help save this world… We’ll be able to discover new resources, energy resources which will revitalize our own. This is our chance to learn more about our planet and maybe even save it.”
Lines like that bring to mind “Tomorrowland,” a film directed by Brad Bird and released by Disney in May. Saving our future is the same agenda in this dimension-leaping adventure. Both films show a serious regard for science fairs as springboards for world-changing geniuses. Both plots pair a scientist and a bright girl who notice an inventive boy at a competition in the state of New York. Despite his design for a flying machine flopping, the visitors recruit him as researcher with a future in inter-dimensionality.
The 2015 iteration of “Fantastic Four” introduces fifth-grader Reed (Owen Judge) telling his classmates his goal when he grows up is to be the first human ever teleported. His teacher chides him for failing the assignment: “pick a real career in the real world.” Reed has already built a prototype in his Long Island garage.
Four years later Reed, now played by Miles Teller (“Insurgent,” “Divergent”) attempts to demonstrate his Cymatic Matter Shuttle at the high school science fair. That’s when he encounters Dr. Franklin Storm, dean of the Baxter Institute in Manhattan, and Sue Storm (Kate Mara, “House of Cards,” “Transcendence”). She is Storm’s adopted daughter from Kosovo. And incredibly acute at “pattern recognition.” Marvel marries Reed and Sue in a 1965 comic book. They also exchange vows in the 2007 film “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer,” directed by Tim Story again.
Joining the quantum gate crew are Reed’s best friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) who used to help him sneak tech from the Grimm family junkyard; and Franklin Storm’s son Johnny (Michael B. Jordan, “Fruitvale Station,” “Chronicle”), an ace mechanic and dauntless street auto racer.
A fifth member of the team is Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell), a bitter anti-authoritarian techie from Latveria (capital is Doomstadt, according to Marvel Comics lore) who earns the derisive nicknames “Adolph” and “Borat.” A few years ago he exiled himself from the Baxter Institute after burning its data servers, yet his mentor Franklin coaxes him back. After all, he was the first to conceive, if not construct, a teleporter. Last year in “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” Kebbell played the treasonous lieutenant ape to Caesar, the alpha primate of Muir Woods.
Before sending up astronauts, NASA performed sub-orbital and orbital trial launches with chimps in 1961. A test run in “Fantastic Four” teleports a chimp to some other dimension, aka, “the other dimension.” There is only one other one, it seems. The teleporter craft’s camera brings back video images of an uninhabited planet at undetermined coordinates in the known universe.
Reed, Ben, Sue, Johnny and Victor suit up for an unauthorized trip before the proverbial suits from NASA grab their experimental gizmo. On the nameless other-dimensional orb a living neural energy pulses underfoot. Reed, Ben, Sue and Johnny make it back to the Baxter lab– but only after out-running green fissures in the unstable surface. Victor, however, gets stranded there until rescued by a later expedition.
The returning four are fantastically transformed. “They’re not powers,” Sue scolds her stepbrother Johnny, who thinks it’s way cool to fly on fire. “They’re aggressively abnormal physical conditions.” Besides turning invisible, Sue can project force fields. “Neuropathically,” it’s explained. Reed can elongate his limbs like rubbery taffy. (The 2015 film omits a smirking inquiry about elongating his penis in the 2005 dialogue.) And Ben is a rock-clad behemoth dispatched on covert military operations.
“All these abilities come from one place, another dimension that our scientists have taken to calling Planet Zero– a planet infused with the same energy that transformed these survivors and potentially could transform our military capabilities,” states Dr. Allen (Tim Blake Nelson, “The Incredible Hulk,” “Minority Report”). As chairman of the board of the Baxter Institute, he goes over the head of dean Storm. Allen assures the money and military interests: “We’ll have control of more than that world, we’ll have control over ours.”
As in “Avatar” (2009) and “Jupiter Ascending” (2015), the plot of “Fantastic Four” is all about exploiting resources elsewhere. To quote their respective press notes, the earthlings in James Cameron’s “Avatar” aim to plunder “Pandora, where a corporate consortium is mining a rare mineral that is the key to solving Earth’s energy crisis,” while the Wachowskis imagine “a universe in which the Earth is just one small piece of the vast machinery of galactic commerce—a prize, about to be seized and stripped of its most precious resource: humanity.”
All three films supply cautionary fables. Their plots take sides against the exploiters. But “Fantastic Four” at least entertains some dissonance. Victor distrusts the government to operate the quantum gate, cynically cracking: “We could send our political prisoners there. Waterboarding in the 4th dimension could prove very effective.”
Franklin Storm foresees a science-for-science’s-sake bonus– “That place could explain the origin of our species. The evolution of our planet.”– like the impetus for the trillion-dollar corporate spaceship christened “Prometheus” in the 2012 film “Prometheus” directed by Ridley Scott. Scott did not title his work after either of the characters named Prometheus introduced in 1968 by Marvel Comics or by DC Comics in 1986.
When Storm tries selling his inter-dimensional travelers as saviors of our world, Victor pushes back: “Not that it deserves to be saved. I mean think about it. People running the world are the same ones running into the ground so maybe it deserves what it’s got coming to it.”
A naysayer turned uber-nemesis, Victor ultimately identifies the fourth dimension as his new homeland: “It’s not enough to ruin your world. Now you want to ruin mine.” He takes on the Fantastic Four and opens a black hole for dispatching Earth “into the other dimension.”
“Humanity had its chance,” decrees the doomed one. The space-time continuum will not let him get away with it, though. Sequels transcend all quanta in perpetuity, throughout the universe, in any and all media now known or hereafter devised.
Tagged with: Fantastic Four, Josh Trank, Marvel Comics, quantum realm, Stan Lee
Dark Places: “our blood” and “a useful life” in true-like crime
written and directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner
acted by Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Corey Stoll, Christina Hendricks, Chloë Grace Moretz, Tye Sheridan
distributed by A24 and DirecTV
Charlize Theron (“Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Prometheus,” “Monster”) powers through another role as a damaged combatant. In “Dark Places” she plays Libby Day wrestling with a 28-year legacy of lies. She is dragged into digging up ugly truths about the murders of her mother and two sisters in their Kansas farm house.
Back in 1985 Libby testified that her older brother Ben did it, and he’s been in prison ever since. Tye Sheridan (“The Tree of Life,” “Joe,” “Mud”) plays Ben as a 16-year-old with Satanic metal band posters in his bedroom, and Corey Stoll (“Ant-Man,” “House of Cards”) plays middle-aged Ben as a prisoner with Shakespeare tattoos on his forearms.
Like “Gone Girl,” “Dark Places” is adapted from a novel by Chicago author Gillian Flynn, a one-time TV critic for Entertainment Weekly. Although I cannot compare novels I have not read, I can say “Dark Places” is almost as good as “Gone Girl.”
“I was eight the night they were killed,” narrates Libby, who was seven in the novel. “And suddenly I was famous. The little orphan girl of the Kansas Prairie Massacre. So strangers sent me money just enough for me to do nothing. Which is exactly what I did.” She neither wrote nor ever read “A Brand New Day,” a book about her trauma that no longer earns her royalties.
The film opens with Kill Club– a Kansas City gathering of true crime buffs– inviting Libby to make a paid appearance. Her contact there is the treasurer. He’s a local laundromat owner played by Nicholas Hoult (“Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Warm Bodies”). “Lyle Wirth looked like a serial killer, which probably meant he wasn’t one,” narrates Libby.
French writer-director Gilles Paquet-Brenner retraces themes found in “Sarah’s Key,” his historical mystery melodrama from 2011. Kristen Scott Thomas plays a journalist investigating a 1942 incident during the police round-up of Jews in Paris. Ten-year-old Sarah hides her little brother in a closet. He dies before she can escape a detention camp and unlock the closet. In “Dark Places” a more charged bond between a sister and a brother is uncovered decades after a tragedy.
Redundancy is a drawback in Paquet-Brenner’s screen adaptation. Perhaps Flynn’s prose is to blame. On the trail of her no-count drunk dad, Libby learns from the manager of a men’s shelter: “I’d bet anything he’s living at that toxic waste site, that’s an old dumping spot for grasshopper bait, loaded with arsenic.” Right afterwards, Libby narrates: “I wondered what it said about me, that my own father was living in a toxic waste dump.”
If the narrative is overly framed, the editing of diverse timelines puts each revelation into a sequence without off-the-shelf suspense. Thankfully, there’s no countdown over the three weeks before the Day case evidence is tossed due to budget cuts. But why does Libby need to tell others they have no idea what happened that night in 1985 and then not tell them what did? Her own father uses that line too.
Visually and tonally “Dark Places” is not too dark, but using different film styles for different perspectives on the past is unoriginal, especially for the first-person killer. A costuming faux pas is outfitting Theron with a dark green baseball cap that makes her look like a celeb hiding her fabulous face from the paparazzi. When she takes it off for a closing scene of trite closure, it’s just another overdone touch.
“Dark Places” works in the true crime genre on more than one level. Although the triple homicide, the conviction that was never appealed, a survivor’s book, and a club of crime-solvers are all made up, Paquet-Brenner’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel make compelling use of truly dark news from the 1980’s: foreclosed farms, serial killers, child molester charges, and teen satanists. The Day family deals with “the Day blood,” “our blood,” “my blood”– and how to make “a useful life” out of too many lies and too little money.
Tagged with: Charlize Theron, Dark Places, Gilles Paquet-Brenner, Gillian Flynn
The Gift: a past gives back, badly
written and directed by acted by Joel Edgerton
acted by Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall, Joel Edgerton
distributed by STX Entertainment
Shopping for stuff for their new California house, a childless Chicago couple run into Gordo (Joel Edgerton). He knows a lot about Simon (Jason Bateman, “Horrible Bosses 2,” “Horrible Bosses”). Back at Fairmont Park High School Gordo’s nickname was Weirdo, Simon tells his wife Robyn (Rebecca Hall, ”Transcendence”). She will learn an awful lot more about her husband and his classmate, and it’s awful. Horrible.
That’s the set-up with no spoilers of “The Gift,” a psychological thriller written by Joel Edgerton, “a long-time fan of intelligent genre films,” say his press notes. Making his directing debut, Edgerton stands out playing Gordo as passive and insistent, apologetic and aggressive, overly kind and underlyingly creepy. In “Exodus: Gods and Kings” Edgerton’s Ramses was far more imposing.
“The Gift” accessorizes the “mid-century modern home,” as the realtor calls it, with two horror-style jolts in the first act, which makes sense when you notice that a co-producer is Jason Blum from “Paranormal Activity.”
Gordo drops clues like “an eye for an eye, I say” and “the bad things, they can be a gift.” Later he will teach Simon: “You’re dealing with the past but the past is not done with you.”
Simon is angling for a promotion as a national division sales rep at his security company. A dirty trickster since he was a teenager, he continues to practice his “winners and losers” tactics at the corporate level.
Robyn had a miscarriage and maybe a breakdown back in Chicago. Her longtime yearning for a baby resides in a psyche now unsettled by Gordo’s unwelcome entry into the couple’s life. By the time a baby comes, Gordo is indelibly implicated in their lives going off the rails.
In “The Gift” Joel Edgerton leads a wife on a tense trail with step-by-step disclosures of one scary fact after another about her husband and his high school classmate with gifts to give. People who treat people badly might feel bad later. Where bad people come from and the bad that comes later. The 2013 film “Honeymoon” by Czech director Jan Hrebejk got this right too.
Tagged with: Joel Edgerton, The Gift
Cartel Land: civilian outliers versus outlaw capitalists
Posted in Uncategorized by Bill Stamets on July 22, 2015
directed, co-produced, co-shot, co-edited by Matthew Heineman
scored by H. Scott Salinas and Jackson Greenberg
presented by A&E IndieFilms
distributed by Orchard Films
Like a sequel to his January 19, 2001 prison break from Puente Grande, the July 11, 2015 escape of Joaquin Guzman Loera (aka, “El Chapo”) from Centro Federal de Readaptación Social Número 1 upped his props as a Mexico’s primo narco folk hero.
“[I]t’s totally bad ass,” says Mario Alfonso Valenzuela, mayor of El Chapo’s hometown of Badiraguato. Reuters also quotes a 15-year-old local marijuana planter: “The honest truth is, when I found out about it, I got drunk for three days, and I tell you I cried, I’m not ashamed to say it.”
Jose Mireles (aka, “El Doctor”) and Tim “Nailer” Foley are deemed heroic too. For opposing Mexican cartels. In his cogent documentary “Cartel Land” Matthew Heineman depicts two vigilantes, a thousand miles apart, with a common enemy.
Charismatic leaders of heavily armed civilians, Foley and Mireles started, respectively, Arizona Border Recon and Grupo de Autodefensas in Michoacán. Heineman– who captained soccer and lacrosse teams at his Connecticut prep school– readily admits to interviewers that he’s never covered a war, but that’s certainly how his subjects see their struggle against traffickers in drugs and illegal immigrants.
Heineman devoted a year to observing Foley and Mireles. He and his co-editors deftly alternate between five Foley segments and four longer Mireles segments. “Cartel Land” begins and ends with night scenes of meth cookers wearing bandanas and carrying guns.
“What can I say?” the leader of the crew asks Heineman in the film’s opening. “We know we do harm with all the drugs that go there [U.S.] But what are we going to do? We come from poverty. If we were doing well, we would be like you. Traveling the world or doing clean jobs like you guys.”
Foley, a vet and laid off construction worker, patrols the U.S. border in the unforgiving Altar Valley with a handful of volunteers in paramilitary paraphernalia. Treks to find scouts for cartel traffickers in hilltop lairs are largely futile. In one scene they accost a few Mexicans and radio the U.S. Border Patrol to take custody. At the start of their single-file march, Foley orders one of his men to “Drop him” if a cartel suspect “tries anything.”
Mireles’ followers number in the hundreds. They treat their countrymen with extra-legal harshness. One night an Autodefensas roadblock nets a man with incriminating cartel tattoos. Mireles orders one of his men: “Get everything you can out of him and put him into the ground. Immediately.” A later scene at a base of operations shows his interrogators bloodying detainees. Screams from more brutal unseen sessions echo off the bare concrete walls.
“There’s people all around the world trying to make a difference,” declares Foley, as we see him raise a flag. “They’re all just like me… They’re tired of nobody doing anything so they take the law into their own hands.” In another scene, his girlfriend shows him news about Mireles on her laptop. “I hope they kick some ass down there,” urges Foley. “That’s the way it should be done up here too.”
“It’s the cartels,” explains Foley. “They’re the ones terrorizing their own country and now they’re starting to do it over here.” Elsewhere in the film Mireles tells Heineman that Mexicans cannot depend on the authorities: “There is no government. The government is often working with the criminals.” The filmmaker never indicates if Mireles knows about Arizona Border Recon, a much smaller group than his.
Heineman says he started making “Cartel Land” after reading Damon Tabor’s article “Border Of Madness: Crossing The Line With Arizona’s Anti-Immigration Vigilantes.” Heineman notes in his end credits that “Arizona storyline inspired by” that reportage in the December 20, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone. Tabor encountered a gamut of vigilantes. Foley’s group is the least extreme. Among the details not making it into “Cartel Land”: Foley mixed the ashes of his late dog Budwerd into the black ink for tattooing his likeness on his back.
Two other “story consultants” besides Tabor appear are credited. Ever since premiering his documentary at the Sundance Film Festival last January, Heineman has emphasized his priority is storytelling– “without outside experts or text cards,” as his Director’s Statement underscores.
In 2007 filmmaker Jonathan Demme told the New York Times that “in fiction you are trying to make it seem as real as possible, and in documentary you are seeking to make it as dramatic as possible.” Westerns are a natural genre for framing the drama of “Cartel Land.” Foley and Mireles happen to be ruggedly handsome figures in frontier sagas on both sides of the border.
“This is what I consider to be the wild wild west,” relates Foley. “They have more guns. They have more people. It’s kind of like a David and Goliath story out here. We’re David and they’re Goliath.”
Mireles is a bigger media celebrity than Foley. Mexico’s press initially valorized the vigilante. Apart from internal discord in Autodefensas, his wife has her own grounds for doubting his image: “Jose Manuel Mireles is not who we all think he is. He has the same power to convince people that all the best movie characters have.” She leaves him for his infidelity.
“I became even more motivated, almost obsessed, as the lines between good and evil became ever more blurred,” writes Heineman in his A&E IndieFilms press kit. “It is this moral ambiguity that intrigues me.” Extra-legal, not extra-marital, activities ultimately compromise the image of Mireles.
“We can’t become the criminals we’re fighting against,” Mireles instructs his second in command, known as Papa Smurf. Farflung self-defense groups he organizes in the region lack discipline. Over time some members turn to thuggery and theft. Cartel infiltrators and collaborators join. For bad irony, cartel-like criminal activity occurs in Autodefensas, especially after the Mexican government co-opts the movement.
As popular trust erodes, Papa Smurf implores townsfolk: “We’ve given you security, we’ve given you peace. We’re not the bad guys.” A man in the crowd retorts: “We can’t believe in criminals… If we don’t believe in the institutions of the state, we are finished as citizens!”
Arizona Border Recon, by contrast, comes off as straightforward. “There’s an an imaginary line out there between right and wrong, good and evil,” says Foley. “I believe what I’m doing is good and I believe what I’m standing up against is evil.” Adding no nuance, Heineman reiterates this simple dichotomy with a second Foley soundbite: “I believe what I’m doing is good. And I believe what I’m standing up against is evil.” There is no blur on Foley’s side of the border.
“The more time I spent down there, the more complex the story became,” discloses Heineman. Yet he superficially treats the contradictions he uncovers in the Mireles narrative. A 2012 documentary Heineman made with Susan Froemke– “Escape Fire: Lessons for the Future of Healthcare”– grappled with complexity. They skillfully crafted a persuasive critique of interlocking crises in the U.S. medical policy and practices. (Fromke is one of the story consultants for “Cartel Land.”)
“I have faith in an audience being able to interpret complex material,” Heineman told the Los Angeles Times earlier this month.
“It’s just a never-ending story,” offers a meth cooker wearing his government-issued Rural Defense Force uniform. “This war is to protect a lot of people’s business interests… Some way, some how, everybody has gotten corrupted… The Autodefensas and the people cooking meth, we’re pretty much the same team. We’re actually helping fund the Autodefensas. And we find them with whatever we can. Even drugs to sell to get guns, get trucks, get people to work.”
“We will do this as long as God allows it,” continues the head of the meth crew. “As long as He allows it, we will make drugs. And every day we make more because this is not going to end, right? We’re the lucky ones, for now.”
If “Cartel Land” cannot circumscribe the two-nation terrain its title names, Heineman notes one cycle that is not intractable. Foley reveals that as a teen he fled his abusive dad. Years later he met his granddaughters and complimented his estranged son for raising them well. “I told him I had him to thank because everything he did to me, I did the exact opposite, so the cycles can change,” Foley shares. “It just takes somebody to change them.”
A&E IndieFilms touts “Cartel Land” by alluding to Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella “Heart of Darkness”: “Filmmaker Matthew Heineman embeds himself in the heart of darkness.” Except Heineman is no Marlow; neither Tim “Nailer” Foley nor Dr. Jose Mireles are Kurtzes; and the states of Arizona and Michoacán are hardly like the Congo Free State.
“Cartel Land” does score ethnographic insight that recalls lines Conrad wrote two years earlier in his preface to a different novel: “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel— it is, before all, to make you see.”
If Heineman’s lens never captures the cartels in all their obscene cruelty, the testimony of victims makes it clear why the Mexico’s Minister of the Interior is offering a 60 million pesos bounty for El Chapo, which is no doubt far more than it cost him to break out.
Tagged with: Arizona Border Recon, Autodefensas, Cartel Land, documentary film, El Chapo, El Doctor, Jose Mireles, Matthew Heineman, Nailer, Tim Foley
Ant-Man: dads and daughters foil 15 billion USD deal in sub-atomic dimension
directed by Peyton Reed
written by Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay, Paul Rudd
acted by Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Michael Pena, Bobby Cannavale, Judy Greer, Abby Ryder Fortson, Wood Harris, Tip “T.I.” Harris, David Dastmalchian
presented by Marvel Studios
distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Add another entry to the Marvel Comics encyclopedia of sensitive super-heroic smart alecks: Ant-Man (Paul Rudd). And open an insectarium for his allies– the bullet ant, crazy ant, carpenter ant and fire ant.
Unversed in Marvel lore? The hyphenated title character is no chimera. Unlike the insect-human mutants in “The Fly” (1958) and “Return of the Fly” (1959), both with Vincent Price, or David Cronenberg’s “The Fly” (1986). Nor is the “Ant-Man” of 2015 a descendant of “Mant,” the faux 1962 film shot in “Atomo Vision” that figures in the plot of Joe Dante’s “Matinee” (1993). And Ant-Man is certainly not akin to Spide-Man, with five films to his name since 2002. Same phylum, different class.
For Marvel Studios, Peyton Reed (“Yes Man,” “The Break-Up,” “Down with Love,” “Bring It On”) directs comic sci-fi action fare based on Dr. Hank Pym, a character introduced by “The Man in the Ant Hill” story that appeared in “Tales to Astonish #27” from 1962. Distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, “Ant-Man” profits from a topical, if toothless, critique of an American corporation. This one is named after Pym. Marvel Entertainment is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Disney.
Reed’s PG-13 version stars Michael Douglas as Pym. In 1987 his secret formula for “alter[ing] atomic relative distance” let him and his wife miniaturize as mini-operatives in cool outfits. They intercepted an intercontinental ballistic missile launched by Soviet separatists. Sacrificing herself to complete this covert mission, she vanished into a “quantum” void.
Due to misgivings that his “game-changing” gizmo could fall into the wrong hands for “toppling governments,” Pym hides his technology for mobilizing “a soldier the size of an insect, the ultimate secret weapon.” That gets the inventor ousted from his San Francisco company. He returns years later to thwart his evil ex-protege Darren (Corey Stoll) who’s selling out to the evil consortium Hydra.
Pym recruits Scott (Paul Rudd) to re-operationalize Ant-Man. A neuro-tactical interface in his helmet lets him command an army of normal-sized ants upgraded with semi-sentience. Pym’s estranged daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) is on board as an anti-Darren co-conspirator. She ends up falling for Scott.
We first meet Scott leaving San Quentin after a three-year stint for his whistle-blowing Robin Hood-style burglary of a bad Bay Area billionaire. Even with a masters degree in electrical engineering, the ex-con cannot hold down a gig at a Baskin-Robbins. He’s way behind on child support and wants visiting rights to see his daughter Cassie (a winsome Abby Ryder Fortson missing her upper front teeth).
Repairing damaged family relationships is a sentimental through-line of “Ant-Man.” Pym and Hope reconcile. Cassie can ultimately see her dad as her hero. As in “Contact” (1997) and “Interstellar” (2014), a channel of father-daughter communication will open despite inter-dimensional obstacles.
The screenplay is witty. A Pym Technologies marketing video pitches this blather: “It’s time to return to a simpler age, one when the powers of freedom can once again operate openly to protect their interests… to create a sustainable environment of well-being around the world.”
Rudd– credited as a screenwriter along with Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish and Adam McKay– gets four scenes where his character comments on his own and others’ dialogue to create comic discomfort. These self-referential lines are less insidery than usual for a franchise keen on meta-quips. Cue a whistling of “It’s a Small World” and one tune by Adam & the Ants.
In contrast to the 14 earlier Marvel vehicles for Captain America, the Hulk, Iron Man and Thor, “Ant-Man” is aptly scaled much smaller. Its action sequences in micro-landscapes and sub-atomic interstices are nonetheless spectacular. And there’s the usual teasing warmth, high-tech dazzle, and moralizing on international justice. Advertised as “a high-stakes, tension-filled adventure,” “Ant-Man” is more like an anti-corporate comedy about dads, daughters and the distance between atoms.
Tagged with: Ant-Man, Hank Pym, Marvel Comics, Marvel Studios, Paul Rudd, Peyton Reed, quantum realm
Batkid Begins: do good and feel good and be heroes just for one day
directed by Dana Nachman
written by Dana Nachman & Kurt Kuenne
edited by Kurt Kuenne
presented by New Line Cinema
distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
Five-year-old Miles Scott– his lymphoblastic leukemia in remission– spent November 15, 2013 dashing around San Francisco in a black suit and a black Lamborghini defeating costumed foes of the DC Comics character Batman. Make-A-Wish® Greater Bay Area (“We make wishes come true”) staged all this for the little boy from Siskiyou County who told the foundation: “I wish to be the real Batman.”
After The Riddler and The Penguin were cuffed by uniformed SFPD officers, a United States Attorney read a criminal indictment of the two “enemies of Gotham” issued by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Gotham Division. At a City Hall rally an estimated 20,000 San Franciscans and out-of-towners cheered as Mayor Ed Lee handed Batkid a key to Gotham City. President Barack Obama sent a four-second shout-out: “Way to go, Miles. Way to save Gotham.”
Two months later Make-A-Wish® Greater Bay Area posted on YouTube “Batkid: The Official Make-A-Wish Story,” a ten-minute video that John Crane Films made for the tax-exempt organization. Viewers at the charity’s site are invited to “Join the conversation.” Complete this sentence by clicking on one of three adjectives: “This story makes me feel Hopeful/ Reflective/ Inspired.”
A negative feeling is unthinkable. After all, 96% of the 555,697 Tweets were “positive.” A four-minute video posted by “How Clever Girls Collective Helped #Batkid Save The Day” claims 720 million people in 117 countries noticed. This self-tagged “social media influencer and content agency” tallied two billion “impressions” online. “#SFBatKid is trending number one in the world,” a Clever Girl announced.
“A story we simply love,” cooed Diane Sawyer on ABC World News on November 15, 2013. Crane intercut clips from CBS, CNN and NBC too, with footage shot by his crew of 12.
On “Batkid Begins”– a 2015 feature-length documentary directed by Dana Nachman– Crane is credited as a story consultant and co-executive producer, along with Ian Reinhard, who executive-produced 26 episodes of the “Hollywood Uncensored” series and the 2005 documentary “24 Hours on Craigslist.” Nachman’s prior credits include the 2013 documentary “The Human Experiment” that asked: “With thousands of untested chemicals in our everyday products, have we all become unwitting guinea pigs in one giant human experiment?”
“Batkid Begins” spotlights Patricia Wilson, the can-do executive director of Make-A-Wish® Greater Bay Area. She says she fielded 156 interview requests, and her site peaked at 1400 hits per second. And at the end of the day she had 7189 unread emails. She tells us some callers simply left joyful sobs in her voicemail.
Nachman packages the uplifting day of wish fulfilling as a promo video for Wilson’s foundation. The first such wish granted was in 1980 when a 7-year-old boy with leukemia got to play cop with the help of the Arizona Department of Public Safety. That boy died, but Make-A-Wish states that 80% of its kids “reach adulthood.” To qualify, wishers must be between the ages of two-and-a-half and 18, and “diagnosed with life-threatening medical conditions— a progressive, degenerative or malignant condition that has placed the child’s life in jeopardy.”
Partly funded by an Indiegogo outreach that netted $109,630, “Batkid” dotes on logistics of generosity. High-powered players include Katie Cotton, who was at the time was Apple’s vice president of worldwide communications. “Normally as the Chief of Police I’m not in favor of flash mobs,” Greg Suhr informed citizens assembled outside City Hall. He concedes this one was “cool.” He prerecorded several video pleas to Batkid to save Gotham.
Last March Variety reported that Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema got rights to Nachman’s documentary, originally titled “Batkid Begins: The Wish Heard Around The World” for its premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival in Utah. For a fictional adaptation, Julia Roberts is scheduled to star as Wilson, who told a TEDxBayArea audience last December that she is known around her office as the Bitch in Charge.
Wilson acknowledges it’s hard to take the Batkid phenomenon as non-fiction. During an interview in the documentary she recounts hearing that construction crews joined throngs in Union Square to wave at Miles on his lunch break at Burger Bar on Geary Street. ”It was like one of those really cheesy Hallmark shows on TV,” cracks Wilson.
“Batkid Begins” begins with a sunny cityscape shot from the air. On a soundtrack abuzz with soundbites from real or simulated newscasts, one voices the consensus sentiment: “Well, this must be the feel good story of the year.” As the camera tracks a sidewalk crowd, we hear a line from the Scala & Kolacny Brothers choral cover of the David Bowie and Brian Eno song “Heroes” from 1977: “We can be heroes, just for one day.” That ethereally breathed lyric applies both to Miles in the guise of Gotham’s savior, and the league of volunteers, donors and onlookers– online and on the streets of San Francisco.
Publicists pose a two-part question this aspirational documentary cannot answer: “Did Miles need the world for inspiration? Or did the world need Miles?” For me, “Batkid Begins” could be about more than a boy’s wish to play a comic book hero and all the things he made so many people feel on November 15, 2013. Although it’s not likely her intent in chronicling that media spectacle, Nachman underscores social interactions transcending metrics of blood cell counts and Instagram hashtag hits.
Wilson and her Make-A-Wish team do what we all do. We make up things to make life better for others. Everyone around us makes-our-day through play-acting. More or less thoughtfully and truthfully. In San Francisco, Siskiyou County and society at large.
Tagged with: Batkid Begins, Miles Scott, Patricia Wilson, San Francisco, theatrum mundi
The Gallows: do not hang out with the understudy
Posted in Uncategorized by Bill Stamets on July 9, 2015
written and directed by Chris Lofing & Travis Cluff
acted by Reese Mishler, Pfeifer Brown, Ryan Shoos, Cassidy Gifford
“The Gallows” is good for a handful of shout-out-loud jolts, if your movie nerves are as unjaded as mine. Outperforming its New Line Cinema trailer, this high school horror film written and directed by Chris Lofing and Travis Cluff is most outlandish for its old-school scolding.
The day before the Beatrice High School drama club opens a play titled “The Gallows,” jerky jock Ryan (Ryan Shoos) talks his buddy Reese (Reese Mishler, who took classes at DePaul University and Second City) and cheerleader Cassidy (Cassidy Gifford) into vandalizing the colonial New England set. That way Reese, an awful actor, can escape embarrassing himself on stage.
And– Ryan schemes– then Reese can play the role of consoling hero in the arms of Pfeifer (Pfeifer Brown). His distraught co-star has no idea Reese quit the varsity football team to get the male lead due to his crush on the diehard drama diva. “For crimes against the township of Bedford,” his character is scripted to hang by the neck until dead in “The Gallows.”
Lofing, a Beatrice High School alumni, and Cluff, who plays the drama teacher, begin their debut feature with a handheld camcorder tape. In 1993 a parent in the audience documents a staging of “The Gallows.” Reese’s character is hung for real. A local TV newscast at the time cites a “prop malfunction.” Unmentioned is that the tragedy occurred just before Halloween.
A Beatrice police department stamp of “video evidence” appears upfront and applies to everything we will see on screen, including the last minute or two that’s recorded on a police body-cam. Ryan’s camcorder and his classmate’s cell phones undergo all manner of natural and supernatural trauma. The increasingly abstract screen glitches are designed with something like beauty.
All supernatural activity is attributed to the student hung in 1993. An end credit reads: “In memory of Charles Grimille.” That old newscast replays by itself on screens in the school. Theater doors lock the three vandals inside, along with Pfeifer who unexpectedly turns up. Lights go out. Landlines die. The teens spend a long scary night running in the dark from Charlie. Neck abrasions come from nowhere, followed by fatal noosings. Charlie steps up his possessing for a final twist that is no more or less nonsensical than others in the genre.
Lofing and Cluff named their Fresno production company in Tremendum Pictures– possibly sampling mysterium tremendum, the Latin expression for God’s tremor-inspired mystery that a Lutheran theologian coined in 1917.
Although “The Gallows” invokes no Christian creed or satanic spirits, this better-than-average haunt show does abide the horror mandate to teach teens a lesson: Be responsible. Show up when you’re supposed to. Otherwise, you will hang and so will anyone nearby.
I am not kidding. That really is the moral. Irresponsible self-serving conduct is to blame for all the bad at Beatrice High.
What triggers Charlie’s revenge? Cast in the same role as his son, Reese’s father chickened out and “called in sick” back in 1993. His understudy was Charlie, so Charlie was hung that night. “Why don’t you just call in sick?” Ryan urges Reese. “I call in sick three times a week, minimum.” When Reese balks, Ryan mocks him for bringing up obligations: “A responsibility to these guys? Come on.” This is what leads up to them knocking apart the set.
Horror films traditionally punish characters for sex. There is only one kiss in this film and it’s on stage. Unlike the sub-genre where video cassettes, internet sites and cell phone cameras are channels of evil, here all things magnetic or digital only operate as narrative infrastructure.
“The Gallows” shows the downside of not showing up. The revenge of the understudy.
Tagged with: Beatrice High School, mysterium tremendum, The Gallows
Terminator Genisys: Fate escape by re-engineering epicycles
directed by Alan Taylor
written by Laeta Kalogridis & Patrick Lussier
acted by Jason Clarke, Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, J.K. Simmons, Matthew Smith, Byung-hun Lee
presented by Paramount Pictures and Skydance Productions
A sci-fi franchise with time travel is an ideal nexus for characters to talk about fate and free will. Screenwriters Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier oblige in “Terminator Genisys.” The escapist action delivered by director Alan Taylor (“Thor: The Dark World”) is not quite a colloquy on paradoxes, though. Sorry, undergrads taking Philosophy 101 in summer school. Look elsewhere for a paper theme.
“God, a person could go crazy thinking about this,” gripes Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in “The Terminator” directed by James Cameron and co-scripted with Gale Anne Hurd in 1984. In her 2015 incarnation, Sarah (Emilia Clarke from “Game of Thrones”) will wrap her head around “alternate timelines” and her arms around Sgt. Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney from “Divergent” and “Insurgent”).
This five-film franchise predictably sends men and machines into the past to change the future, and others to thwart changes. Plot permutations are limited to terminating or safeguarding Sarah or Skynet, a vast computer network. Once it’s “self-aware,” Skynet is destined to exterminate humanity. Sarah’s destiny is birthing the leader of the resistance against Skynet-operated machines, which include humanoids called Terminators.
Each intervention in time alters details in the backstory. Judgment Day, the secular apocalypse Skynet launches using U.S. and U.S.S.R. missiles, gets “postponed” at least once. Portents and intellectual property travel back from 2029, among other years. Storylines are set in 1984, 1991, 1997, 2003, 2004, 2017 and 2018.
Characters can know of things to come. One way is to find their younger selves and pass along things to remember. Sarah is repeatedly instructed by her future son and his future father: “You must be stronger than you imagine you can be.” Variants of “You can do this… straight line… don’t look back” are told, heard and recalled in “Terminator Genisys.”
John Connor (Jason Clarke, who played another leader of California underdogs in “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”) can sound like a prophet to his followers. Engineers working on the Skynet prototype accelerate their delivery schedule, thanks to leaks of future technology. They have no idea what’s to come, though, after their system goes online and auto-upgrades at a “geometric rate” to sentience, if not sapience.
“They say it got smart. A new order of intelligence. Then it saw all people as a threat. Not just the ones on the other side. Decided our fate in a microsecond. Extermination,” tersely recaps the Kyle (Michael Biehn) of the 1984 film.
In James Cameron’s Terminator mythology, Skynet was originally conceived as super-software for automating U.S. defense against U.S.S.R. aggression in the Cold War. Before then, Skynet was the real name of two spin-stabilized military communication satellites built by Ford Aerospace in Palo Alto. NASA and U.S. Air Force launched them from Cape Canaveral in 1969 and 1970 for the United Kingdom Defense Communications Network.
Kalogridis and Lussier embroider Skynet mythology by adding a San Francisco campus whose CEO rallies employees at a press opportunity: “Cyberdyne will revolutionize technology with the ultimate killer app, Genisys. I’m here to tell you our pre-orders as of this afternoon have reached one billion users.” Looming is a “new age, where every single piece of technology will be seamlessly linked.” The utopian product is branded LinkLife. Genisys’s avatar is a 3D-simulated 10-year-old (Ian Etheridge) who greets users: “I cannot wait to meet all of you tomorrow. We will change the future together.”
Kyle gets an alert about this Trojan Horse: “I was given a message. You can kill Skynet before it is born. Skynet is Genisys.” His older self tells this to his younger self so Kyle will act tactically in the film’s present, prior to Skynet going online globally.
“The boy is the alternate timeline version of you– Kyle Reese is remembering his own past, which is our future,” explains the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Resistance hackers repurposed this unit and sent it back in time to raise and protect Sarah.
Pops– as Sarah calls her illegal guardian since age nine when a Skynet-sent Terminator unit killed her parents– may grasp the ins and outs of time travel better than the film’s screenwriters: “Alternate timelines are not complicated. It is merely a matter of tracking possible futures using an exponential growth and decay algorithm.”
A script glitch in “Terminator Genisys” is calling Skynet’s gizmo “the first tactical time displacement weapon.” Yet it functions just like all the other time displacers that tactically dispatch human-terminating humanoids to make preemptive hits. No plot in the Terminator franchise would work otherwise. Each successive Terminator model is more devious and deceptive than the last. The resistance is always at a disadvantage, hijacking older models for its own missions. It’s his lack of “mimetic poly-alloys” that proves a Terminator ally is no impersonator or infiltrator.
I count three time travelers from 2029 in “Terminator Genisys.” What’s novel is that after reaching one point in the past, Kyle will take Sarah to a later point in time. How? Using a gizmo built long before its time. And how could it be there, or rather then? Thanks to high-tech know-how from the future– conveyed on prior trips.
Forget the engineering. What about the experiences? “I’m remembering a life I never lived, but I know it’s real,” relates Kyle. “In a past I shouldn’t remember but I do.”
“It is possible if he were exposed to a nexus point in the time flow,” theorizes the Terminator, who takes care to define his quantum field terms. “A nexus point is an event in time of such importance that it gives rise to a vastly different future.” Neither Kyle not Sarah raise their hand for a follow-up: Is there a deity or IT overseer who discerns “importance” and resets timelines accordingly? And who is our Judge on Judgement Day?
Since the first sequel, each Terminator film recycles catchphrases and debuts new ones. Acknowledging Schwarzenegger’s own age, “Terminator Genisys” has his character self-assess as “old not obsolete.” Another prospect for a signature expression that he repeats for comic effect is ”theoretically.” It fits the endless calculations made by his Terminator character.
Theoretically, the second Terminator film “re-enacts the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt,” suggests a self-labeled “independent futurist.” An Australian theologian spots “a Christological slippage between Schwarzenegger and John Connor” as “world saviors.” A prof who penned “Manhood in Hollywood from Bush to Bush” claims: “`Terminator 2’ cloaks its sadomasochistic fascist fantasies in the guise of the violent, melodramatic family film.”
“Terminator and Philosophy: I’ll Be Back, Therefore I Am”– a book playfully lifting a classic line from the franchise– contains the essay “Judgment Day Is Inevitable: Hegel and the Futility of Trying to Change History.” Jason P. Blahuta looks at Sarah and John as “world historical individuals” and notes: “Fortunately, the Connors never read Hegel, and so they attempt to change history… Unfortunately for John, the machines seem to be Hegelians.”
Hegel outlines an inevitability for freedom, without intercessory time travel. For characters in “Terminator Genisys” to realize their own freedom, Kalogridis and Lussier resort to “alternate timelines.” It’s a move in the tradition of early astronomers who affixed epicycles to sync heavenly bodies in transit.
Can a Hegelian dialectic reconcile the world historical outcomes dictated by Terminator mythology, and characters with free will and faith they can change the future? Kalogridis and Lussier can only delegate this dilemma to Sarah, John and Kyle. Adept in weaponry, they’re out of their league in quantum mechanics and the philosophy of history.
“The future is not set, there is no fate but what we make for ourselves” is a line repeated throughout the franchise. The third film ends with an uncertain John Connor accepting: “Maybe the future has been written. I don’t know.” (The fourth film was written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris.) John begins the fifth by urging his anti-machine insurgents to create a legacy for unborn generations: “we sacrificed everything so that they could live in freedom.”
In the press notes for “Terminator Genisys” Emilia Clarke offers her reading of her director: “I think one of his goals with this movie is to ask what it is to be truly free as a human being, and the choices these characters have to make in deciding that.” At one plot impasse, the Terminator tells her: “I do not see a choice.” Answering for all Sarah’s that came before, if not for every scripted character on a screen, she says: “The story of my life.”
Despite Sarah’s resolute declaration to a civilian– “We’re here to stop the end to the world”– it’s clear the longevity of her franchise hinges on perpetual failure to preempt Judgment Day. Letting the machines exterminate humanity would likewise terminate the storyline, of course. The recursive Terminator plot is Sisyphean.
Yet in the latest iteration, Kyle tells Sarah in the last reel: “You need to understand that Skynet’s gone. You’re free. For the first time you can choose the life you want. Any life you want.”
Well, not quite. Clarke is reportedly in line to reprise Sarah in two further Terminator films.
Kyle’s closing voiceover almost sounds like a benediction: “It was over. Skynet was gone.” Transcending screenplays, Kyle and Sarah can lay down their weapons and set forth on a philosophical quest. “Though questions remain. We’ll search for answers together. But one thing we know for sure. The future is not set.”
“Terminator Genisys” negates a key detail in “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” where The Terminator intones in his Austrian accent: “Judgment Day is inevitable.” World historic individuals cannot `reset the future,’ contrary to the 2015 tagline? The Terminator adds a pessimistic prognosis: “It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves.”
In “Hegel and the Impossibility of the Future in Science Fiction Cinema” Todd McGowan writes: “Science fiction directs us toward a better future, even if negatively, through the depiction of a nightmarish one.” He sees “No Fate”– “the mantra that Sarah Connor scrawls with her knife in `Terminator 2: Judgment Day’”– as “emblematic for the genre as a whole. The very depiction of a possible future in the science fiction film calls us to act in order to prevent or realize it.”
Sarah, John and Kyle are free to fight their fate. Time travel and sequels can keep replaying paradoxes until a time when the first Terminator is never fabricated, or the last one is terminated.
Tagged with: Alan Taylor, film franchise, Hegel, paradox, self-aware, Terminator Genisys, time travel
Why So Mad, Max? It’s Not the Oil.
Posted in Uncategorized by Bill Stamets on May 19, 2015
directed by George Miller
written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nico Lathouris
released by Warner Bros. Pictures/ Village Roadshow Pictures
Two stoic strangers on the run from a post-apocalyptic tyrant seek “redemption”– one of the few words this hard body duo shares– in “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Max (Tom Hardy from “Locke, “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Bronson”) and Furiosa (Charlize Theron from “Prometheus,” “Aeon Flux,” “Monster”) flee shirtless shaved-head War Boys manning fiercely armed vehicles, bent on Valhalla. It’s a spectacular road saga with a tornadic maelstrom of lightning and red sand that evokes a DeMille epic.
Director George Miller continues the outback western series he and Doug Mitchell started with “Mad Max” in 1979. Miller set his looney debut: “A few years from now.” Mel Gibson plays a rural cop in a V8 Interceptor chasing a psycho biker.
Twentieth-century civilization is on the cusp of a steep descent. A sign on Highway 9 reads “Anarachie 3KM.” White lines still run down the middle of the road. Police radios work. Newscasts appear on TV. Max has a beachside home with electricity and running water.
After his wife and infant end up as roadkill, Max kills off the guilty motorcyclists like a down under Judge Dredd. “His only weapon”– growls the trailer– “600 horses of fuel-injected vengeance.” A very mad Max drives off into the end credits.
Gibson returns for more mayhem on rougher off-road terrain in the next two films. Six camels will replace the cylinders in his earlier muscle cars. In “Mad Max 2” (1981; with the subtitle “The Road Warrior” added for its U.S. release) and “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome” (1985) Max is still on the road to dystopia. Outlandish details increase as the standard of living drops. Cue longer chases in improv-welded vehicles more inventively weaponized. Max suffers some more. Does some good. Moves on alone. His sidekicks– a dog and a monkey– do not survive.
In the 1981 film Max helps a caravan of peaceable folk start their 2000-mile trek to a better, greener place they call Paradise. He drives a decoy tanker to divert marauders seeking a tank-load of gasoline. In the next film Max helps a tribe of orphans return to Sydney in semi-ruin. They light beacons in the “highscrapers” to bring others home.
A risky mission of mercy likewise drives “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Furiosa, who holds the Roman rank of Imperator, kicks off the main chase by steering her massive “2000 horsepower nitro-boosted” War Rig off course during a routine run to Gas Town. Her secret cargo is five wives of Immortan Joe (Keays-Byrne, who played the vile biker in the first film.) In tow is a trailer filled with 3,000 gallons of “guzzoline” (aka, “juice” in the 1981 film) to purchase safe passage through rival territory.
Immortan Joe is the demigod of the Citadel. Atop a butte (more like what geologists used to call a monadnock) he commands boys on jumbo treadmills to haul up water from an aquifer under the desert. The precious fluid is known as Aqua-cola. “Because he owns it, he owns all of us,” explains Furiosa.
He soon finds his live-in bank vault no longer holds his “prized” breeders. Furiosa freed them. Taunts painted on the wall include: “Our Babies Will Not Be Warlords” and “We’re Not Things.” Furiosa plans to drive the women to the Green Place and Land of Many Mothers where she was born. “My clan was Swaddledog,” she proclaims to the remnants of her people, a tough band of elderly women on motorcycles.
It was Immortan Joe who stole Furiosa and her late mother “7,000 days ago, plus the ones I don’t remember” by her count. That’s it for her backstory, except for an off-camera detail Theron says Miller passed along: Furiosa is “barren.” Sounds like she was originally enslaved for breeding. With the built-in affect of her name, this taciturn character embodies more fury than the entire cast of the “Fast & Furious” franchise.
Max is mad this time because in the opening scene some War Boys steal his wheels and boots, then hang him upside down shackled inside a cage. Intravenous tubing mainlines his “high octane crazy blood” into the veins of Nux (Nicholas Hoult.) Max is moved to the front of Nux’s war vehicle like a live hood ornament. The doomed War Boy and his attached O-Negative “blood bag” join the chase after Furiosa. “If I’m going to die, I am going to die historical on Fury Road,” rhapsodizes Nux.
A massive desert storm distance Nux and Max from an armada of Citadel pursuers. They regain consciousness near the War Rig. After a messy struggle with wonderfully engineered reversals, the two men cast their lot with Furiosa and the five women. Trust is in low supply, yet they must keep moving. Max and Furiosa both hate Immortan Joe to the bone.
Miller shifts gears for a you-can’t-go-home-again narrative. “Max is somebody who just wants to go home, but there is no home,” Hardy explains in the press notes. Furiosa finds her own home is no more. Maybe there’s a better place out there, across the uncharted Plains of Silence. She figures the women can haul enough gas to travel for 160 days, the script’s least sensible line.
Max parts ways, then circles back with a better plan. Their itinerary boomerangs. Since the Citadel is now undefended, let’s drive back the way we came, he urges. Make that home. Water– “a ridiculous amount of clear water”– draws the old women. And they like the prospect of kicking more ass.
Magnificent fiery chases ensue. One tyrannicide later, women literally and figuratively ascend to power at the Citadel. In the 1985 film women– Aunt Entity and Savannah Nix– lead two communities Max encounters. “I can’t help but be a feminist,” Miller tells Vanity Fair.
“I love action movies,” Miller admits to the Sydney Morning News. “I think for me that’s where film language basically evolved.” “Mad Max: Fury Road” is “a continuous chase,” the 70-year old director adds with no apology.
Miller’s elemental plot sets up intricate action sequences largely free of CGI-style implausibility. Thankfully absent are the default cheats of Hollywood chases and fights. Hardy, Theron and a legion of stunt players look like mortals taking uninsurable risks and flexing limbs that could break. Special effects amputate part of Theron’s arm. And yes, there are fireballs. I like how the crudely refined petrol burns an ugly deep red shade with foul black smoke.
“One of the most common uses of CG (computer generated imagery) in this movie was to change the color of the sky,” Miller told the press on a junket. Namibia is where he shot the chases, passing on deserts in Chile and China. New South Wales furnished locations for the 1979, 1981 and 1985 films.
Accents are the main cues that all four Max characters are driving in Australia. After revisiting the three earlier films and seeing the new one in its 2D and superior 3D versions, I do not recall hearing any country named. All the steering wheels are on the right side in the 1979 film. American International Pictures released it stateside dubbed with accents sounding less Aussie. Techno-devolution may account for the steering wheel of the War Rig changing to the left side by 2015.
Scarce as words are as the world goes downhill, Miller and co-writers Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris indulge in faux retro names for their characters. Who needs lines if your moniker is Capable, Rictus Erectus, or Toast the Knowing? A noun unknown to Nux is “tree” until he sees his first one in the Wasteland.
“Neo-medieval” is Miller’s label for the mise-en-scene of “Mad Max: Fury Road,” reports Bill Zwecker in the Chicago Sun-Times. Miller’s bravura detailing recalls the canvases of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. “Fascist feudalism” is how production designer Colin Gibson identifies the rigid regime of the Citadel.
“It’s 45 years after fall of the world,” state the press notes for “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Miller tells us nearly nothing about the past. “As the world fell, each of us in our own way was broken,” relates Max in his opening voiceover. Later he tells Furiosa, “If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane.”
What broke the world? Other voices can be heard: “It’s the oil, stupid”…“Mankind has gone rogue, terrorizing itself”… “Our bone are poisoned.” The compass spins wildly in the Gigahorse monster truck driven by Immortan Joe.
A narrator other than Max opens Miller’s 1981 film with lore about “a firestorm of fear” that birthed “this wasted land.” Over a black-and-white montage of newsreel chaos intercut with decolorized clips from the 1979 film, he continues: “For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war, and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing.”
“Mad Max” scenarios inform two studies by the United States Air Force: a 1994 exercise pondered “future space activity” in the year 2020; a 2009 “research report” looked ahead to 2080.
The military academics and their outside consultants variously imagined: “a devastating, earthquake in California decimated the US economy and led to mass internal migrations”; “Most critical will be the availability of fresh, uncontaminated water”; “A crisis in values may…occur in wealthy countries due to the rise in individualism caused by the immense access to information technology and the pursuit of happiness of the wealthy labor force.”
The Air Force may retrogress once aviation fuel runs out and need to deploy “solar-powered” dirigibles and gliders for surveillance and attack. “Oil is literally the lubricant and the fuel of the world‘s economic engine, when it depletes, the world economy will throw a rod,” argued one study.
“Who Killed the World?” That accusative scrawl left on the wall of Immortan Joe’s inner chamber is unanswered. Miller is more into Max’s psyche than the planet’s tilt. No Cassandra or Pandora, Miller instead name-drops a popularizer of world mythology who George Lucas often cites. ”When you read Joseph Campbell, you realize what he [Max] is: He’s a character who predates cinema and is almost in all folklore, the wanderer in the wasteland searching for meaning,” Miller tells USA Today.
Campbell took directions from The Decline of the West. He read Oswald Spengler’s two-volume tome seven times, confiding in a 1932 letter: “Spengler has become my major prophet.”
Miller takes a more parochial view than Spengler and the Air Force futurists. “In Australia we have a car culture the way Americans have a gun culture,” he told Starlog, The Magazine of the Future, in 1982. “The cult of the car. Violence by car.”
Rage on the road propels Miller’s films, not peak oil or carbon debt. “One fourth of motorcyclists have a Mad Max syndrome, characterized by an inability to stop physical and verbal aggression, anger and hostility,” reports the Polish Psychological Bulletin. A 2010 study tested 510 bikers for this “personality type” by using the Multifactor Risky Behavior Scale, Pavlovian Temperamental Scale, and the Unhealthy Behavior Inventory.
What makes Max so mad? Bad guys wrong him. Besides the lives of loved ones, they take his stuff. His ride, his boots, his coat, his blood, his freedom. That’s not right. So he makes it right. And will keep on doing it until all the gas is gone.
Tagged with: action, Charlize Theron, fascist feudalism, film, George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road, neo-medieval, post-apocalyptic, Tom Hardy
Insurgently virtual realism: a cosmic uncanny cinema
Posted in Uncategorized by Bill Stamets on April 19, 2015
VR stood for Virtual Reality long before a local YA novelist with those initials came along. Veronica Roth, as it turns out, puts a lot of VR scenes in her “Divergent” trilogy. Fans of her novels and their film adaptations may not realize that VR has a curious and uncanny past.
Immersive illusions diverted our ancestors long before Roth sold over 30 million books and the first “Divergent” film grossed almost $300 million. Novelists and screenwriters create entertainment that sensationalizes VR as suspect. Yet therapists deploy it to heal.
The simulations, serums and software of “Divergent”– Roth’s 2011 novel adapted for the 2014 film– play an even bigger role in the screen version of “Insurgent,” the sequel she published in 2012. The trilogy ends with “Allegiant,” her 2013 installment that will be adapted into two upcoming films. (Note to readers of credits: what starts out titled “Insurgent” turns into ”The Divergent Series: Insurgent” in the end credits. Apologies to the vice president of franchise titling at Lionsgate but I will use the shorter title here.)
Roth set her story in Chicago long after a really big, really bad war. It was 100 years ago in the film “Divergent” and 200 in “Insurgent.” No one fixed up the highrises dinged and scarred by collateral damage since then. “Transformer” rampages did worse. Superlative CGI sequences will obliterate more of the Loop in “Insurgent,” but landmark preservationists ought not despair. All these digitally spectacular demolitions are limited to virtual reality scenarios in the head of heroine Tris (Shailene Woodley).
Whatever the infrastructure once suffered, the city must have fast-tracked the surviving computer engineers and neurochemists to upgrade virtual reality technology far beyond today’s devices and digital environments. Sixteen-year-olds undergo hyper-realistic hallucinations at the hands of adults, as we learned in “Divergent.” Far more terrifying than ACT and SAT tests from pre-apocalypse Chicagoland, “fear landscapes” in these simulations (aka, sims) test the aptitude and personality of teens.
Everyone is profiled in one of five factions, the futurist counterpart of today’s 50 wards. Post-war “founders” created the “faction system”– a civic division of labor with a dress code– to ensure “social order.” After choosing a faction for life at an annual rite, each teen must pass initiation sims. Except for the kids who test positive in more than one faction– Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless or Erudite– and are ostracized as Divergent. Authorities deem them threats to the status quo, far worse than independent aldermen on the city council in late 20th century Chicago.
Tris is a Divergent, unfit for any faction since her personality has extra facets. She also has an anomalous aptitude for knowing when she is inside a sim, and can alter its contours and outcomes. Kind of like Neo (Keanu Reeves) in the Wachowskis’ “The Matrix,” another trilogy with Chicago roots and a VR mise-en-scene.
Invariably, virtual reality films deliver meta-twists to mess with our minds. There are games within games within games in “eXistenZ” (1999). Simulations within simulations within simulations in “The Thirteenth Floor” (1999). Dreams within dreams within dreams drive the techno-thriller “Inception” (2010). In the last seconds of all three films, there is a tease that yet one more level of reality is in play.
“Insurgent” belongs to this sub-genre. Spoiler alert: the revelation in the last reel is less radical than Tris discovering her city is really one big digital sim. But it is momentous. Think tests. As in “The Maze Runner” (2014), “The Signal” (2014) and “Dark City” (1998).
It explains why a tall wall surrounds the city. One detail in Roth’s first novel is omitted in the two films. On a field trip to the wall Tris puzzles over one detail in the gate: “The lock is on the outside.” All these years, citizens of Chicago feared whatever was out there.
Tris’s isolation recalls “The Truman Show” (1998). Since childhood Truman (Jim Carrey) so feared the ocean, he never dared venture from Seahaven Island. His phobia stems from witnessing a traumatic incident staged by producers of a 24-hour live television show centered on the oblivious Truman, who is surrounded by TV actors and covert TV cameras. His own show is not aired in his fake town, so he has no idea the whole world is watching his fake life.
Maybe Tris gets out of Chicago in Roth’s third novel. Does it matter that in the first two films there are no radios, TV sets or movie theaters? Roth’s readers already know, but viewers must wait until March 2016 when the first “Allegiant” film– maybe to be titled “The Divergent Series: Allegiant, Part One”– is supposed to come out.
“Insurgent” reveals that the founders encrypted a time-release truth inside an urn-like container. Only a full-fledged Divergent has the skill set to access the secret video message within. Suspended in the air by eight tentacle-like cables dangling from the ceiling and hooked into a super-computer, Tris passes five intense sims keyed to the five different factions. Their respective emblems chiseled in stone will crumble into dust during the end credits.
Before “Insurgent” opened, fans could submit to less strenuous testing while seated in a sim chair. Samsung toured the country in a customized truck with the come-on: “Shatter Reality.” The five-city itinerary included a Chicago stop at Navy Pier, where the nearby 3-D IMAX theater beckons: “Watch a movie or be part of one.”
Widescreen ballyhoo of the 1950’s touted a visual `wow’ surpassing traditional movie screens and new television sets. CinemaScope “Puts you in the picture.” “You’re in the show with Todd–AO.” Cinerama aimed to transcend the proscenium: “The crowds who see it are literally projected into a realm of experience with unlimited horizons.” Today’s multiplexes equipped with Dolby Atmos audio systems use similar hype: “Feel every dimension. The movie comes alive in breathtaking detail as sounds move all around you, even overhead, so you feel like you’re inside the story.”
Donning a Samsung Gear VR headset (“As if you were at in front of a mega screen”), you encounter Kate Winslet’s character Jeanine in “a fully-immersive, 360-degree narrative experience” set in a high-tech lab. If you didn’t see “Divergent,” she is the implacable coup-orchestrating leader of the Erudite faction. Jeanine installs remote mind-control sim transmitters in the heads of the Dauntless faction, manipulating them to conduct a pogrom against Abnegation.
“We must remove those who do not fit,” Jeanine forewarns. “You must not fail.”
“Subject 5 is ready,” you hear on the head phones. That’s you. Fans blow in your face to simulate Chicago wind and your chair shakes. Two “fearscapes” test you. The four-minute “4D” scene ends with this pre-scripted appraisal of your performance, not that you get to actually do anything: “Impressive. No one’s ever made it past the second simulation. Cut the subject loose. I want to study this one.”
That means you’re a Divergent, just like Tris. Fans seeing “Insurgent” find out that subject 6 and subject 7 die in sim tests ordered by Jeanine.
Screenwriters like to scare us away from any new technology that can immerse us in illusions more compelling than those CGI puts on multiplex screens. Is this Hollywood demonizing its future competition for audiences? Virtual reality is taken to extremes in two reactionary sci-fi films released in 2009.
“Gamer” imagines a near-future when “mass-scale, multi-player online games” enjoy mega-global popularity. Players use real-time remote transmitters to guide real people in lethal first-person shooter games with live ammunition. An evil billionaire (Michael C. Hall) has bigger designs than Jeanine in Roth’s books. He seeks to transmit mind-control via insidious “nano-cells” in the bloodstream of the body politic: “A hundred million people who buy what I want them to buy, vote how I want them to vote, do pretty much damn well anything I figure they ought to do.”
In “Surrogates” people stay at home wearing VR gear to operate their better-looking robot stand-ins who go to work, make love and do everything else out in the world. The mastermind behind this technology, though, has second thoughts and unplugs us from this ruinous artifice.
Virtual reality is addictive in “Surrogates” and other storylines. Memories recorded from the cerebral cortex onto “playback” data-discs figure in the plot of “Strange Days” (1995). To re-experience thrills by proxy– including porn-like sex and chases resembling stunts in action films– customers go to a dealer (Ralph Fiennes) calling himself the “Santa Claus of the subconscious.” Sold on the black market, these recreational excursions into second-hand reality are outlawed.
By contrast, teens in “Divergent” and “Insurgent” are forced by law into simulations that overpower their senses.
A graduate of Barrington High School and Northwestern University, Roth says she got the idea for simulations from a psychology course. She learned about exposure therapy for treating fears. Specialists in this field write case reports about curing spider and cockroach phobias, among others. Clinical uses of virtual reality are described in publications like Military Medicine, Simulation in Healthcare, CyberPsychology & Behavior, and the Journal of Network and Computer Applications.
Articles include: “What’s wrong with virtual trees?” and “Can Virtual Reality Increase the Realism of Role Plays Used to Teach College Women Sexual Coercion and Rape-Resistance Skills?” Polish soldiers heading to Afghanistan participated in a study of “Pre-Deployment VR Computer-Assisted Stress Inoculation Training.”
Post-traumatic stress disorder is addressed in the Virtual Vietnam, Virtual Iraq and Virtual World Trade Center simulations. Tortured asylum-seekers in Europe were treated similarly. Children and combat vets felt less pain when nurses were dressing their burn wounds, if patients were distracted playing VR games at the time. Mental health experts simulate psychotic hallucinations with VR. Surgical technique, public speaking and pedestrian safety are all taught with VR.
Virtual reality is a training tool in sci-fi films. Things always go wrong. In “Virtuosity” (1995) Russell Crowe plays a VR character distilled from the psychological profiles of 183 serial killers. He is version 6.7 of software named SID (Sadistic, Intelligent, Dangerous): “I’m a 50 terabyte self-evolving neural network.” Created as an avatar for training exercises, his program downloads into an android that escapes the Law Enforcement Technology Advancement Center and wreaks havoc in Los Angeles.
In “The Lawnmower Man” (1992) a scientist (Pierce Brosnan) at Virtual Space Industries proclaims: “Virtual reality holds the key to the evolution of the human mind.” For a test subject he picks the mentally challenged title character. A combination of VR sessions with doses of Nootropic turns him into a too-smart online cyber-being on a power trip: “Virtual reality will grow. It will be everywhere… By the year 2001, there won’t be a person on this planet who isn’t hooked into it, and hooked into me.” In the sequel “Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace” (1996) the head of Virtual Light Institute envisions a virtual unity: “the future is one world, one thought, one mind.” This is not where the experiment was supposed to go.
Writers sometimes get diagnosed as delusional. They are accused of thinking they’re omniscient and omnipotent, like God or the Lawnmower Man. It’s an occupational hazard for anyone presuming to invent new worlds and the new technologies inside them. Roth’s simulations in her Divergent trilogy and the Wachowskis’ world-like “neuro-interactive simulation” in their Matrix trilogy differ in scale, but the kick these three Chicagoans get as their designers puts them on the same page, if not ward.
Virtual reality is a super-cool incarnation of the creative process itself. It’s understandable that filmmakers like to show off their sci-fi takes on techno-VR as we know it. VR scenes inspire virtuosic visuals, and dialogue about VR devices lets these films think out loud.
In Roth’s novel “Insurgent” Tris notes how new biotechnology excites her brother, who belongs to Erudite. This faction of scientists and scholars is headquartered at University of Chicago’s glass-domed Mansueto Library in the first Divergent film.
Tris says some Erudites are “fascinated by everything, dissatisfied until they find out how it works.” A backstory for that kind of curiosity is related by U. of C. historian Neil Harris. An “operational aesthetic” arose in the 1840’s and 1850’s, he argues in his 1973 book “Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum.” People liked to inquire, as a new form of fun. Deconstructing frauds and gizmos became a past-time. “Barnum understood that people enjoyed the opportunity to debate the issue of falsity, to discover how deception had been practiced, and was even more exciting than the discovery of fraud itself,” Harris writes.
Barnum’s populist schtick of divert-and-debunk was a replay of the patter of phantasmagoria impresarios who projected ghostly apparitions using the lens and lamp of a magic lantern, smoke, silvered mirrors and sound effects. “I will not show you ghosts, because there are no such things,” Philip Polidor assured audiences in 1793 Paris. “I am neither priest nor magician. I do not wish to deceive you; but I will astonish you.” He occasionally claimed he was a “physicist.” “Lantern of fear” was a common name for the optical devices used long before Roth came up with “fear landscape.”
“One knew ghosts did not exist, yet one saw them anyway, without knowing precisely how,” writes Stanford University English prof Terry Castle. U. of C. film prof Tom Gunning analyzes the “entertaining confusion” of a phantasmagoria show this way: “It can be simultaneously rational in its method and seemingly supernatural in its effect.” In pre-electric Europe, here was an operational aesthetic of the occult.
The public entertained itself with virtual spirits, virtual travels and virtual vistas. Louis de Carmontelle, a French painter with a theatrical flair, debuted his new format for landscapes in 1783. On translucent paper he painted the fashionable royals on sylvan estates. Rolled up, the lengthy pictures were slowly cranked through a backlit box for viewing. The J. Paul Getty Museum presented this art in 2000 as “an eighteenth century motion picture” and “the cinema of the Enlightenment.”
British painter Robert Barker patented his idea for realistic 360-degree canvases in 1787 as “An Entire New Contrivance or Apparatus… for the Purpose of Displaying Views of Nature.” He painted panoramas of Edinburgh and London. In both cities he charged admission to rotundas displaying his vistas.
Other entrepreneurs offered “moving panoramas” to the public. One unrolled the passing view from a boat on a 30-mile trip on the river Thames; another sampled sights from a 100-mile trip on the river Clyde.
Theaters later installed versions of these extended canvases to increase realism. A 3,000-foot one unfurled during “A Kentucky Girl” during its 1892 run at the Haymarket theater in Chicago. “One of the scenes will be a race between the heroine on a railroad velocipede and four moonshiners on a hand-car,” promised one newspaper account.
An 1834 panorama simulated a passenger’s point-of-view on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway that had opened four years earlier. Germany’s first steam-powered railway– on a five-mile track between Furth and Nuremberg– began in 1835, despite protest by the Bavarian Royal College of Medicine. “Traveling in vehicles drawn by locomotives should be prohibited in the interest of public health. Such a rapid motion cannot but produce in the passengers the mental affection known as delirium furiosum… To the mere onlooker, moreover, the thing is positively dangerous. A mere glance cast at a locomotive traveling at a very high speed is enough to produce the same mental derangement in the beholder.”
The nervous physicians deemed it “absolutely necessary that a 10-foot wall should be built on each side of the line throughout the entire length, so that the flight of the iron horse may in no way unsettle the public eye and mind.” Despite their prescription, the Nuremberg Transport Museum of today includes an “interactive driving simulator” that seats tourists in a cab so they can drive a locomotive along “a computer-simulated track section.”
German clinicians published a few diagnoses of damage to the nerves, spines and uteruses of train passengers. Anecdotes can be found about viewers overpowered by virtuality, though. Battles on land and sea were popular subjects of 1820’s panoramas. Military bands added atmosphere. One panorama reportedly furnished such “a complete sensation of reality… that on the occasion of his visiting the exhibition, a young man seeing a party of British preparing to board an enemy’s ship, started from his seat with a hurra, and seemed quite surprised when he found that he was not really in the battle.”
The realism of Chicago’s cycloramas, as indoor panoramas-in-the-round were advertised, never incited over-reactions, although one newspaper commentator in 1874 lauded “Paris By Moonlight” as “better than a visit.” An 1877 pamphlet for the touring “The Siege of Paris” made the startling claim: “To realize that this magnificent pageant is, after all, only an illusion requires a stronger mental effort than to accept it for reality.” After seeing “Paris in Flames” another reporter enthused: “What a gorgeous subject Chicago would be for such a picture!”
In April 1892 ten painters completed a 400-foot long canvas depicting the Chicago Fire of 1871. Open daily from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., the Chicago Fire Cyclorama at Michigan and Madison promised: “Falling Walls, Burning Bridges, a Sea of Flame! Thousands of helpless and homeless in a mad furious flight for safety. No words can describe the matchless grandeur of the scene!” Admission was 50 cents for adults and 25 cents for children.
A Chicago Tribune writer sensed “a realism that makes to spectator feel that he is not a mere onlooker, but an active participant in the terrible occurrence.” Five months later an adjacent building caught fire, and the cyclorama suffered fire and water damage. A temporary closing notice blaming over-zealous firemen read, in part: “The boys mistook the painting for the real fire.”
Chicago was the site of the Spectatorium proposed by Steele MacKaye in 1892, as “an entirely new species of building, invented and devised for the production of a new order of entertainment entitled a spectatorio.” Funds ran out for this multi-media emporium of simulations.
To achieve “the most advanced artistic realism” therein he invented and patented stagecraft. His Nebulator to create clouds onstage might have improved upon the “nebulous lantern” used in the 1770’s to beam spectres onto smoke curtains. Other MacKaye devices were illuminoscopes, coloraturas and a luxauleator.
A never-built entertainment machine that aspired to virtually transport its passengers was inspired by H.G. Wells novella “The Time Machine,” first serialized in early 1895. In October of that year, an English showman patented an amusement that shook seats and blew wind at patrons, rather like Samsung’s “Insurgent” tie-in: “My invention consists of a novel form of exhibition whereby the spectators have presented to their view scenes which are supposed to occur in the future or past, while they are given the sensation of voyaging upon a machine through time.”
Two virtual rides appeared in Paris at the Universal Exposition in 1900. Passengers stepped aboard the mock deck of a pitching and yawing ship to behold a moving panorama of maritime scenes in the Mareorama.
More cinematic was the Cineorama, patented in 1897. Its passengers boarded a hot-air balloon-like platform, complete with rigging and ballast, to view an actual balloon ascent and descent. Film cameras had earlier recorded a real ride over Paris. The footage played on ten projectors in a circle for a 360-degree moving picture panorama.
Moving pictures of moving trains delivered more thrill than peril. “When you can throw a picture of an express train on a screen in such a realistic way that persons who see it scramble to get out of its way and faint from fright, it’s about time to stop,” scolded the New York Telegram on October 15, 1896. Two patrons at the Olympia Music Hall “screamed and fainted” when viewing “Empire State Express.” The newspaper backtracked two days later with the qualification that the women “nearly” fainted and amended the account with: “they recovered in time to laugh at their needless excitement.”
In 1905 George Hale and Fred Gifford patented the “Pleasure-Railway,” an attraction seating passengers inside a mechanically rocking railroad car with clickety-clack sound effects and a conductor taking tickets. Films projected on a screen placed at the front of the car had been shot by putting a camera at the front of a locomotive traveling on real tracks. “Phantom ride” was the term for this genre of specialty film. That expression evokes the uncanny effects experienced in phantasmagoria old old.
Hale’s Tours of the World venues were very popular for a spell. By 1906 Chicago had three of these amusements: one on State St. and two at the White City and Riverview parks. There are no reports of their immersive realism triggering the delirium those German doctors forecast back in 1835 for travelers on real trains.
We have bigger– much bigger– things to worry about in the realm of virtual realism. And not just from Hollywood, lauded as “the Baghdad of Phantasmagoria” by a Chicago photoplay magazine in 1925.
Suspicion of appearances predates the simulations Tris transcends. Plato likened what we see in the world under the sun, to shadows cast by a fire on a cave wall, as if we were prisoners in chains. “Seventeenth-century baroque culture,” argues law prof Richard K. Sherwin,”produced a phantasmagoria of endlessly shifting shapes and patterns. It was steeped in self-reflexive illusion: a hyper-awareness of illusion fueling illusion.”
Since the Enlightenment, technology for faking reality increased exponentially. So did suspecting it. And not just by the clinically paranoid or postmodern academics like Jean Baudrillard. In 1991 he wrote a series of provocative pieces in The Guardian titled “The Gulf War Will Not Take Place,” “The Gulf War is Not Taking Place” and “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.” The “willing suspension of disbelief” has come a long way from its 1817 origins.
According to a 2014 paper titled “Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation” published in the European Physical Journal, our known universe is not what we think. Or rather, it could be something that others– not us– thought up. Though not to entertain us.
Two theoretical physicists in Seattle, along with a colleague in Bonn, figured out reality is virtual. Really. They are like Tris, with her Divergent knack for sensing when she is inside a simulation. Except they use lattice quantum chromodynamics theory. This is the operational aesthetic applied to the ultimate simulation.
When an interviewer at New Scientist asked if this was just “science fiction,” one of the paper’s authors stated: “the answer, statistically speaking, is that we’re more likely to be living in a simulation.” Not reality.
Uh, oh.
Tagged with: "virtual realism", Bill Stamets, Chicago, cinema, Divergent, immersive, Insurgent, Insurgently virtual realism, phantasmagoria, Veronica Roth", virtual reality
Chicago International Movies and Music Festival
Posted in Uncategorized by Bill Stamets on March 5, 2010
Crossover is the key to the second annual Chicago International Movies and Music Festival. Running through Sunday, this twofer fest mixes cinema and concerts.
Tonight’s Robyn Hitchcock event is sold out, so check out Mucca Pazza, a local “circus-punk marching band,” on Saturday. For Sunday’s Closing Night, DJ Spooky, who once remixed “The Birth of a Nation” on stage, will mix soul vinyl with video sampled from Mel Stuart’s film of a 1972 concert in Watts.
Various music documentaries profile Bob Marley’s mentor, an electronic music pioneer, French rappers, Seattle soul, Tibetan folk artists and fans of Stradivarius violin. Two recommended films that recently screened in Chicago come back: “Still Bill” and “Rapping in Tehran.”
Selected capsule reviews follow:
7:30 p.m. “The Scenesters”: Todd Berger writes and directs this insider send-up of young L.A. types he knows all too well. Like his character Wallace Cotten, he is trying to make it in the film industry. After releasing a mumblecore indie, Cotten sidelines as a police videographer. He starts making a documentary about a crime scene cleaner, a television news reporter and a serial killer targeting the title’s demographic. Cotten’s partner Roger Graham is played by Jeff Grace, a former ad exec at Leo Burnett in Chicago. He created Altoids ads targeting “Young Urban Hipsters” when not doing Second City spots and stand-up on the side. “The Scenesters” is framed by courtroom scenes where a prosecutor cues clips from the documentary, its making-of outtakes, TV news reports and videos shot by the killer. The result is snarky niche fun at the expense of unethical film execs– further testimony to the stereotypical Hollywood syndrome of self-loathing. Admission: $10; St. Paul’s Cultural Center, 2215 W. North Ave.
8 p.m. “Polkaholics”: Chicago writer-director Wes Hranchak also shot and edited this chronicle of a polka star’s homecoming. His host is the excitable Don Hedeker, who plays guitar in the band Polkaholics and lectures on biostatistics at the University of Illinois. In 1956, Li’l Wally Jagiello released the Top Forty hit “I Wish I Was Single Again,” followed by 150 albums. Hedeker invites the Miami retiree back for a bar gig on Division Street, once known as “Polish Broadway.” Running just under an hour, Hranchak’s folksy black-and-white video ends by injecting a dose medical suspense to this showman’s salute. Free screening at Cassidy Hall, Chicago Cultural Center.
11:30 am. “Music of the Brain”: Australian director Fiona Cochrane follows up “Opera Therapy,” her documentary about four cancer patients creating an opera, with a report on research linking music to infancy, speech, therapy and social evolution. Most of the dozen talking heads here sport credentials containing the prefix “neuro-” but nary a neuron enters the picture. There’s little specific evidence for claims that range from intriguing to inane. It’s less than mind-blowing to learn that music is “mood-elevating.” One bit of debunking: playing Mozart in the crib really does not increase your kid’s creativity scores. Free screening at Chicago Cultural Center, Cassidy Hall.
Argentinian filmmaker Lisandro Alonso makes allusive dramas with little dialogue and eloquent landscapes. “Liverpool” continues the style of “La Libertad” (2001) and “Los Muertos” (2004), where the camera observes nearly mute men, played by non-actors, undertake interior missions. (more…)
Tagged with: Lisandro Alonso, Liverpool, slow cinema
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Media ownership chart
Tag Archives: CTVglobemedia
July 28, 2009 | Radio, TV
CRTC Roundup: Details on CJNT/CHCH sale
The CRTC has called a hearing for Aug. 24 to hear Channel Zero’s proposal to buy CJNT Montreal and CHCH Hamilton. The application includes some goodies we didn’t hear about in the announcement in June.
The purchase price for both stations is $12, specifically:
Land $3.00
Buildings $3.00
Other Fixed Assets $3.00
Goodwill $3.00
The stations would be financed through a loan of $4 million from CIBC and Brian C. Hurlburt, and $3 million from Channel Eleven. That would go to increasing the size of CHCH’s newsroom and creating a new production facility at CJNT, plus eventually changing both stations to digital.
Canwest can pull out of the deal if CRTC approval is not given by Aug. 31. Channel Zero expects the CRTC will make a decision on the same day as the hearing, I guess.
The proposed programming grid for CHCH would be as follows:
Weekdays: News and local progamming from 5:30am to 7pm, followed by two movies, news from 11-12, a repeat of the prime-time movies and a really-late-night movie from 4am to 5:30am
Weekends: News and local programming from 6am to 1pm, followed by two movies, a one-hour 6pm newscast, two more movies, a one-hour 11pm newscast, and then three repeats of movies shown that day
The proposed programming grid for CJNT would look like this:
Local ethnic programming in the morning and during the evening supper hours (four hours a day total)
Music videos during the day
International ethnic movies during prime time
Movies (it’s not clear if this would be ethnic or not) overnight
On how they’ll bring the stations to get rich quick modest profit:
A short answer is that we will, if the application is approved, focus each of these stations on their core competency; news and local programming at CHCH and relevant and local multi-cultural programming at CJNT. We will not be relying on expensive first run U.S. programming and therefore we can bring the stations to modest profitability in a relatively short time frame.
A table of financial projections optimistically shows CJNT showing a profit as early as fiscal 2011, mainly due to the assumption that local advertising sales will have more than tripled by then, from $1.2 million a year to $4.3 million, despite the fact that they’re replacing first-run U.S. shows by less-expensive movies in prime-time.
Similarly, ad sales at CHCH are expected to recover to $43 million a year (on par with pre-recession levels, optimistic since more than 80% of that advertising came from non-news programming which Channel Zero would be getting rid of), which combined with spending $30 million a year less on programming expenses, and the CRTC’s new taxes on cable companies, would result in seven-figure profits beginning in fiscal 2012. Without its projected $4 million a year from fee for carriage (it predicts a “75% likelihood” for that “by 2011”), the station would stay in the red until 2014.
Channel Zero is also asking for changes to the licenses for CHCH and CJNT. Among them:
Deletion of a requirement for CHCH to have a minimum level of “priority programming” (things like Canadian dramas and news magazines). It argues such requirements are not asked of small stations, only of large broadcast groups.
Deletion of a requirement at CHCH for an independent monitoring committee, since these are related to Canwest’s cross-ownership of various media which Channel Zero does not have
Deletion of a requirement for CHCH to air four hours a week of described video (with the understanding that the station would use described video where available)
Removal of a requirement for CHCH to have distinct programming from Global’s CIII-TV Toronto, which becomes moot if CHCH isn’t owned by Canwest.
Deletion of a requirement for CJNT to make sure 25% of its films are Canadian (Channel Zero argues there aren’t enough foreign-language Canadian films to make that feasible – and it will abide by other Canadian content requirements)
Deletion of a requirement for French-language non-ethnic programming. Canwest twice asked to be relieved of this requirement, and was turned down twice by the CRTC. Channel Zero argues the station must focus on one market for non-ethnic programming, and the French market is already saturated here. It’s hard not to agree with that logic.
Increase in minimum requirements for local ethnic programming from 13.5 hours to 14 hours per week
The Canadian Media Guild’s Lise Lareau looks a bit skeptically at Channel Zero’s plans for CHCH in Hamilton, notably the requested license amendment to remove the requirement to air Canadian dramas and movies in prime time.
UPDATE: The CHCH union, which has agreed to support the sale in principle, is grieving Canwest’s plan to wind up its pension plan before the sale.
Campus/community radio review
The CRTC is undergoing a broad-based review of its policies for campus and community-based radio stations. Among the questions it’s asking:
Should campus and community stations be treated differently?
Should high school stations be licensed?
What kind of programming requirements should they have?
Should low-power “micro” radio stations be licensed or exempt from license?
How much advertising should they be limited to?
The deadline for comments is Sept. 11. The hearing is Nov. 30 in Gatineau.
Not so bold
After being slapped on the wrist for violating terms of license, the CBC has made good on its promise to request an amendment to change the nature of its specialty channel known as Bold. Formerly called Country Canada, the channel was licensed as a network for rural Canadians from a “rural perspective”, but since its transformation into bold (they don’t capitalize the B, so as to remain edgy or something) it’s basically been a network to throw leftovers at. It airs everything from drama reruns to soccer games.
The CBC’s argument for the change boils down to this:
There is insufficient programming from a “rural perspective” to program the service.
Sorry farm people, but you’re just not interesting enough for a whole channel, even with Heartland and Corner Gas.
New programming categories
Since the CRTC announced that it would allow specialty networks access to all programming categories when asked, they’ve gotten some requests for exactly that.
Astral Media is asking for access to all programming categories for Canal Vie, Canal D, Historia, MusiMax, VRAK.tv, Ztélé and MusiquePlus
TVA has received approval for Les idées de ma maison to air up to 10% animated programming. Argent and Mystère have access to a slew of new programming categories, everything from religious programming to feature films and music videos, so long as they fit with the channels’ themes and don’t compete with other networks and don’t go above 10% of the broadcast day. Prise 2 also gets categories added (see below)
Prise 2 must keep its CanCon
Prise 2 can now air TV programs that are as little as 10 years old (the previous minimum was 15) and movies as little as 15 years old (previously it was 25), as well as access more programming categories (documentaries and live sports, limited to 10% of the broadcast day). A request to reduce their CanCon requirement from 35% to 30% was denied.
Télé-Québec, Canal Savoir stay on the air
While the major networks (TVA, CTV, Global) got one-year license renewals as they sort out that fee-for-carriage thing, the smaller non-profit networks are being renewed for the full seven years.
CFTU (Canal Savoir) has been renewed for seven years with no changes to its conditions of license (except a reminder that it will need to transition to digital by August 2011).
CIVM Montreal (Télé-Québec) and its retransmitters across Quebec were also renewed until 2016, with some considerations about representation of minorities but otherwise no changes.
Corus gets more steamy
Corus Entertainment has come to an agreement to buy Sex TV and Drive-in Classics, two specialty channels, from CTVglobemedia. The next day Corus reported a $145-million quarterly loss. Last year Corus bought CLT from CTV and rebranded it VIVA.
Bell has, rather unsurprisingly, decided to pass on new local programming fees directly to the consumer.
CBC News has a piece looking at the future of a CBC radio AM transmitter in Whitehorse that might be shut down when the station switches to FM.
The CRTC is going to mandate broadcasters to provide at least four hours a week of descriptive video.
Canwest has asked for MovieTime in HD.
The Green Channel has had its focus changed slightly from “environment” to “sustainability”, and a request to bump its feature film limit to 15% from the new standard 10% was denied.
Rogers Cable is ditching PBS station WPBS Watertown (N.Y.), in favour of a PBS station in Detroit, citing the fact that the Detroit station has better programming and a more reliable signal. Rogers says basic cable subscribers won’t be charged more (they just get a different PBS station), though some Rogers customers in Ottawa and London are getting mixed signals from customer service.
Videotron, which is setting up a wireless network in Quebec, has reached a deal with Rogers that would allow Videotron customers to roam in Canada using the Rogers network.
Canwest has received authorization to make changes to its CHCA-TV-1 retransmitter in Calgary, which is funny because Canwest has announced that it is shutting down CHCA.
Oh, and CTV still needs our help to save local television.
Tags: Bell TV, CBC-Radio, CHCH, CJNT, Corus-Entertainment, CTVglobemedia, Rogers Cable, Videotron
May 2, 2009 | TV
Worthless stations sold sarcastically for $1 (UPDATE: NOT!)
This post has been updated. See below.
I feel bad for the people at three television stations: CKX-TV in Brandon, Man., CHWI-TV in Wheatley (Windsor), Ont., and CKNX-TV in Wingham, Ont.
Tags: A Channel, CHWI-TV, CKNX-TV, CKX-TV, CRTC, CTVglobemedia, Shaw
April 8, 2009 | Opinion, TV
Low on cash? Just ask the gummit
The federal government, apparently spooked enough by Canwest and CTVglobemedia’s cries that the mediocalypse is here, is reportedly considering a $150-million fund that would help small-market television stations. This would be in addition to the Local Programming Improvement Fund which has the same goal.
As much as I’m not a fan of consumers paying for local TV stations they already get for free, even that would be preferable to a government bailout with who knows how many strings attached.
Tags: CanWest, CTVglobemedia, federal politics
March 4, 2009 | TV
CRTC roundup: broken television
The big news this week is the release by the CRTC of submissions from major Canadian private television broadcasters whose licenses are up for renewal in August. This includes CTV/A, Global/E!, TVA, Sun TV, Citytv and OMNI. (TQS is the notable exception since it had its own dealings with the CRTC after it went bankrupt).
The CRTC has suggested having one-year license renewals (instead of standard seven-year ones) and dealing with the TV financial crisis in the meantime. The networks have gone along with that and are recommending status quo until August 2010.
The private networks (especially CTV Globemedia and Canwest) are re-repeating all of the please-give-us-money talking points they’ve been sending toward the CRTC for years now, including bringing up their pet project of forcing cable and satellite companies to give them money for putting their free over-the-air channels on their systems, mainly because they can’t find a way to make a profit off advertising and say the system is broken.
Among their other money-grabbing and money-saving ideas:
More access to the new Local Programming Improvement Fund (deigned to help with local programming at small-market stations) by expanding them to larger markets (Canwest even argues that CJNT Montreal should have access to the fund even though it doesn’t provide any local news.)
Having the ability to own their own production companies instead of being forced to use independent production houses
That the proposed 1:1 ratio of spending on Canadian vs. non-Canadian programming is “not viable” because it would mean cutting back on the very thing that is generating the revenue to keep the networks afloat (and besides, CTV argues, they’ve already signed contracts for the 2009-2010 broadcast year)
Canwest proposes a “5 and 10” rule that would require 5 hours a week of local programming for stations serving markets of under a million viewers, and 10 hours a week for stations serving markets of over a million. Since most Canwest stations already have local programming requirements far in excess of 10 hours a week, this would save it a lot of money. (It counts only four stations as being in large markets – even Global Quebec is considered small because it only counts English-speaking viewers, which means it would drop from 18 hours a week of local programming to only five)
Even Quebec’s TVA, which does plenty of local (or at least regional) programming, wants to cut back. It’s asking to reduce the amount of local programming at its Quebec City station from 21 hours a week to 12 UPDATE: They now say they only want to cut it to 18 hours a week.
Canwest even proposes going further than its continued demand for money from cable companies, and throw out some new ideas that nobody has suggested before, including:
Non-simultaneous substitution, which would replace U.S. signals with Canadiens ones showing the same programming, even if they’re not being broadcast on both channels simultaneously.
Banning commercial advertising from CBC
Government assistance for digital conversion
UPDATE: More coverage from the Globe and Mail, which also looks at how much the networks are spending on Canadian versus foreign content.
Canwest wants Global Quebec to become Global Montreal
As part of its submission to the CRTC on license renewal, Canwest said it wants to convert only primary transmitters of its 15 major stations to digital by 2011, and as part of that it wants to convert regional networks Global Ontario and Global Quebec into local stations in Toronto and Montreal, respectively. CKMI-TV is actually based out of Quebec City (and also serves the Eastern Townships through a transmitter in Sherbrooke), but all its programming, including its newscasts, originate in Montreal.
The change wouldn’t affect programming but would allow CKMI to attract local advertisers, even though Canwest says they would not be taking advantage of this much.
CTV wants to pull the plug on CJOH-8
In its submission to the CRTC, CTVglobemedia put forward a long list of television transmitters it said it would not apply for licenses to renew past August. Included in that list is a retransmitter for CJOH Ottawa in Lancaster, Ont., on Channel 8. Montrealers and off-islanders with good TV antennas will note that this transmitter serves southwestern Quebec since it is just across the border. Shutting the transmitter down means those near the Ontario/Quebec border will have to tune into CJOH’s Ottawa transmitter or CFCF-12 in Montreal.
The Obituary Channel?
The CRTC has granted approval for a regional Quebec cable channel called Je me souviens, which will be devoted essentially to obituaries and related public notices. The CRTC did not agree to a request to carry local advertising in addition to the obits, however.
The channel (which is a private venture unconnected to the major broadcasting companies) is interesting because it’s an original idea and because it’s a regional network (most cable networks are national in order to reach as broad an audience as possible).
But if Astral Media couldn’t keep its TATV shopping channel on the air, does a regional channel of nothing but obituaries stand a chance?
UPDATE: I see CJAD reads this blog.
Pay up, CFAV
The CRTC has denied a request from Laval radio station CFAV 1570 AM, which wanted to be excused from the $8,000 a year it has to pay to promote Canadian artists. Its excuse is that it’s not making a profit. The CRTC says rules are rules.
Rogers wants carte blanche on OLN
Rogers has asked for some very radical amendments to its license for the Outdoor Life Network (OLN). Among them, it wants to be able to use sitcoms, comedy shows and animated shows, reduce its restriction on televising live sports, and reduce requirements for Canadian content. The proposal was so radical it caught the eye of the Globe and Mail.
TVA wants carte blanche on specialty channels
Speaking of radical amendments, TVA has filed requests to add more programming categories for three of its specialty channels: Mystère (mystery), Argent (financial news) and Idées de ma maison (home/living). While some might make sense in a world where various forms of programming blend together (say, a game show about science), it’s hard to see some of these categories as being requested solely so that TVA can stretch the envelope and provide programming that has only a tenuous connection to the mandate of the channel.
Among the categories they’d like to add:
Religion programming
Professional and amateur sports, including live sporting events
Drama, sitcoms, comedy programming, animated programs
I’m all for flexibility, but can you imagine a program that has music videos about mysteries? Or a sitcom about financial news?
The Weather/Emergency Network
Pelmorex, the strangely-named owner of the Weather Network/MétéoMédia, is asking for the CRTC to require that all cable and satellite companies operating in Canada have the networks as part of their basic digital services (it’s already required on analog cable). In exchange, the networks will act as “a national public alerting aggregator”, distributing emergency information.
To sweeten the deal, Pelmorex gives idle threats about how their existence will be in “jeopardy” if they can’t force that $0.23 per subscriber out of us, even though most Canadians already (happily) get the Weather Network by default.
Still, having the Weather Network distribute emergency information makes sense, if only because many such emergencies are weather-related and TWN already deals with emergency weather alerts.
The only problem is: Shouldn’t it be the broadcast networks (like, say, CBC/Radio-Canada) who distribute emergency information, so it’s over the air where everyone can receive it?
HD vs. SD
While Canal Évasion wants to start an HD version of the channel, the owners of three HD-only networks – Oasis HD, Treasure HD and Equador HD – want to distribute those channels in standard definition. This isn’t the first request of this kind I’ve seen, and is probably a reflection of the fact that while most Canadians have cable or satellite service, the number with HD service and sets is not as high as they had expected by now, and offering a downgraded SD signal will allow them to reach a larger audience.
The CRTC has approved a request to add five networks, all of third-language programming originating from east and southeast Asia, to the list of eligible channels for satellite providers.
Tags: Canal Argent, CanWest, CFAV, CJOH, CKMI, CRTC, CTVglobemedia, OLN, The-Weather-Network, TV specialty channels
January 8, 2009 | Sports, TV
CTV/Rogers announce Olympic lineup
The consortium of private broadcasters headed by CTV has announced a huge lineup of play-by-play announcers, news anchors, former Olympians and other analysts who will travel to Vanvouver and Whistler for the 2010 Winter Olympics. It also tells us what networks coverage will appear on.
In English, the team is headed by Olympic veteran Brian Williams, who left CBC in 2006 after CTV won the rights to the 2010 Games. English Games coverage will be carried on CTV’s main network, CTV-owned TSN, Rogers Sportsnet, Rogers-owned OMNI, Rogers-owned OLN (Outdoor Life Network), and ATN, along with Rogers radio stations, CTVOlympics.ca and the Globe and Mail.
There’s also, I’m sorry to say, entertainment (eTalk/Ben Mulroney) and music (MuchMusic) reporting to go along with it. (I’m not quite sure how much music-related coverage there can be of the Olympics, but whatever…)
In French, the team will be headed by Canadiens play-by-play man Pierre Houde and Olympic broadcasting veteran Richard Garneau. French Games coverage will be carried on RDS, RIS Info-Sports, the Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network and … TQS.
There’s a certain irony in TQS being part of the deal. Its participation predates its bankruptcy and change in ownership, going back to when it was part-owned by CTVglobemedia. At the time (2005), TQS was supposed to be the primary broadcaster of French Olympic coverage. Now it seems clear that, even if TQS is going to have original Olympic programming and priority for the big-ticket events like hockey, the main network behind coverage in French is RDS.
TQS also has another problem: Unlike Radio-Canada (and to a lesser extent TVA), it doesn’t broadcast outside Quebec. So francophones outside Quebec who don’t get TQS or RDS on cable or satellite (let’s for the moment assume this is a nontrivial figure) are out of luck. On the plus side though, apparently a deal has been worked out to give cable users outside Quebec free access to RDS and TQS during the Games.
Meanwhile, advertisers are noting the highly inflated rate card CTV is using to make up for the $150 million it spent to secure rights to the 2010 and 2012 Games.
Tags: CTV, CTVglobemedia, RDS, TQS, TSN, Vancouver Olympics
December 3, 2008 | Business, Media
Debt crisis hurts HugeMediaCorps
After Canwest announced it was cutting jobs and CTV announced it was cutting jobs, Rogers is now announcing it is cutting jobs, about 100 of them, including staff at Maclean’s, Sportsnet and CityTV.
You know what these three megacorporations have in common? They all thought they could get rich by acquiring other media companies.
Canwest was still paying off the debt it took on when it bought the Southam newspaper chain (which includes my employer, The Gazette) when it decided it needed more cable channels and acquired Alliance Atlantis. This gave them channels including Showcase.
Bell Canada responded to Canwest’s consolidation by planning a megacorporation of its own. Bell acquired CTV and the Globe and Mail and eventually most of CHUM’s assets. In exchange for the latter, BCE sold shares in the company to the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Torstar and the Thomson family, and BellGlobeMedia became CTVglobemedia.
A lot of Rogers’s acquisitions have been in the form of CTV’s sloppy seconds (oh wait, can I not use those words?). This includes Sportsnet, which CTV had to dump when it acquired TSN, and City TV ($375 million), which CTV had to dump when it acquired CHUM. It also acquired the Blue Jays, Fido, as well as specialty TV networks and radio stations within the past decade.
I’m no financial expert, and I don’t have a very clear idea of the balance sheets of these three companies, but this is a really bad time to have debt, especially risky debt (say, holding a bunch of assets in an industry that might disappear entirely in 10 years). The economic downturn that the mortgage debt crisis precipitated is certainly affecting these companies and worrying their management, but I think the debt problem is more significant here than the advertising or subscription revenue problems.
Perhaps this might serve as a warning that consolidation isn’t always the best way to go.
Or perhaps not.
UPDATE (Dec. 9): The New York Times, which I can only assume got the idea from this blog post, has a similar analysis of U.S. newspapers (though in that case, it was taking on debt to acquire other newspapers that got them into trouble).
Tags: CanWest, CTVglobemedia, job cuts, media ownership, Rogers
March 18, 2008 | Media
Corporate executives dishonest, oh my!
The Globe and Mail accuses Canwest head Leonard Asper of talking out of both sides of his mouth, telling the CRTC that Canadian television is in financial peril and telling shareholders that Global TV is making a gazillion dollars with profit margins going up.
On the one hand, it’s true. On the other hand, it’s neither surprising nor is it unique to Canwest. As the article points out, Globe owner CTVglobemedia made the same statements to the CRTC, and I don’t think that company is telling its shareholders that it’s near bankruptcy.
Tags: CanWest, CRTC, CTVglobemedia, Globe and Mail
October 25, 2007 | Business, TV
CTV is drunk with cable power
Just when you thought concentration of media ownership wasn’t such a bad thing, CTVglobemediaempire is asking the CRTC for the power to threaten to pull its cable channels off the air as a negotiating tactic with cable and satellite providers. This includes channels like Bravo!, the Comedy Network, CTV NewsNet, Discovery, MuchMusic (and the entire Much family), Space and TSN/RDS.
Aside from the outrageousness of punishing viewers as a negotiating tactic (as well as the legal ramifications of not giving us something we’ve paid for), most of these channels are licensed in a way that prohibits direct competition from other specialty channels.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If CTV wants to treat these channels like they’re private property to do with as it pleases, then the CRTC should allow free competition from other services.
Tags: CRTC, CTVglobemedia, media ownership, TV specialty channels
September 28, 2007 | Media
Big media mergers remind us of past mistakes
The CRTC has approved two big media ownership changes:
Astral Media, owners of The Movie Network, Teletoon, Astral Photo, and lots of radio stations in Quebec and Atlantic Canada including the Énergie (CKMF 94.3) and Rock Détente (CITE 107.3) networks, will take over Standard Broadcasting, which owns stations in Western Canada, but also three English Montreal stations — CHOM 97.7, CJAD-800 and CJFM Mix 96. Montreal is the only market where there’s any overlap, and even then they work in two different languages.
Rogers (telecom, Maclean’s, Rogers Sportsnet, OMNI and 51 radio stations) will buy Citytv (5 stations in Toronto and Western Canada) after CTVglobemedia (Globe and Mail, CTV, TSN/RDS, Discovery Channel Canada, Comedy Network, MuchMusic, Bravo! Canada, A-Channel, your first-born child) was ordered to divest itself of the competing TV network in its acquisition of CHUM Ltd.
More details in this Wikipedia article.
Neither decision is particularly bad for competition in Canada. The radio deal involves two companies that weren’t really competing, and the TV deal gives Rogers a foot in the door to network television.
Of course, it’s the deals that preceded these that are cause for concern. The fact that CHOM and Mix 96, which should be highly-competitive stations, are owned by the same company is troublesome. And CTV’s takeover of CHUM was ushered through without any apparent concern that their mega cable channel powerhouse has only gotten bigger. It now includes, for example, two all-news stations: CTV NewsNet and City’s CP24, which for some insane reason they were not required to sell off as part of Citytv.
Tags: Astral-Media, CHOM, CHUM, CJFM, competition, CRTC, CTVglobemedia, federal politics, media-mergers, Rogers
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by Jonathan Morton
Celebrating 20 Years of Statcounter
For those of us old enough to remember the mid-to-late-nineties, the dawn of the World Wide Web felt like an era of change and infinite possibility. Prior to Facebook, YouTube and the App Store, the media had us excited about this new frontier called cyberspace where among other things, we could surf the information superhighway. Dial-up modems buzzed and whirred, delivering on the promise of limitless information, free communication and shopping from the comfort of our armchairs.
The web made it possible for anyone to be a publisher. Having a website adorned with animated gifs and blinking text was essential. For businesses, the web opened up new channels of communication and opportunities to break into new markets.
At the age of 16, budding web designer and developer Aodhan Cullen was looking for a way to track visitors to his client’s websites. The only available solutions were either too expensive or would often break.
To remedy this, Aodhan, took it upon himself to build a more efficient website tracker and hit counter to measure the traffic visiting his own client’s websites and display the number of visits to their pages. It soon became apparent that a fast, reliable, unobtrusive visitor tracker was a thing of much value to website owners and before long, plans were set afoot to provide this software as a service to webmasters and website owners.
Aodhan Cullen, Founder and CEO of Statcounter.
Statcounter’s destiny was sealed in January 2000 when 16 year old Aodhan convinced his Dad to let him borrow his credit card to register the Statcounter.com domain. In the 20 years since, Statcounter has grown into a powerful suite of analytics tools, installed on over 2 million websites, and continues to evolve to meet the needs of its members.
Here we’ll take a look at how Statcounter has developed over the past 20 years with the invaluable contributions of continuous feedback and support from you, our valued members.
January 2000 — Coming Soon
Aodhan secured the Statcounter.com domain name and began building an email list of people interested in the service via a temporary holding page.
2001 — Go Live
The first version of Statcounter goes live with a customizable counter, Summary Stats and Recent Pageload Activity.
February 2003 — Server Overload
The demand for the service proved too much for the web servers and for a brief period, Statcounter had to refuse new sign ups.
“The new system is performing well. We are planning on accepting members again by Tuesday, 4th February. All the new statistics will not be available from the start, but will be added to and tweaked over the next week.”
— Statcounter News, February 2003
May 2003 — Visitor Paths
The Visitor Paths report is launched, highlighting the navigation paths visitors take through your website. Visitor Paths remains one of the most popular reports in Statcounter to date.
June / July 2003 — More new features
Due to popular demand, Browser and Operating System stats are added to Statcounter along with Popular Pages and the Magnify detailed visitor report.
October 2003 — Statcounter Version 3
The third relaunch of Statcounter in late 2003 included the following improvements:
Manage multiple counters and projects from one single login
Increase log log size
Search engine statistics
Improved ‘visitor’ stats
These were followed in quick succession by additional country, state, city and isp stats in November 2003.
September 2004 — Ad free version & new features
September 2004 saw the launch of Returning Visit Stats, Drill Downs and Email Reports. And for upgraded members, Secure Tracking and an option to disable ads.
July 2005 — Customizable Summary Stats
A new level of customization was introduced to the summary chart in July 2005, enabling users to change the level of detail, date range, graph type and more.
February 2007 — Visitor Labels
Another hugely popular features in Statcounter, Visitor Labels was introduced in early 2007 and has been helping members identify click fraudsters and recurring visitors.
January 2008 — WordPress Plugin
The official WordPress plugin for Statcounter launched.
June 2008 — Statcounter Version 4
Version 4 of Statcounter, launched in the summer of 2008 included:
Exit link tracking
Faster-loading country stats
Improved reliability and redundancy
Improved loading speed of StatCounter code
Greater technical flexibility to allow for continued system improvements
March 2009 — Global Stats Launch
March 2009 saw the launch of the now hugely popular Global Stats service from Statcounter. Global Stats records market share of Search Engines, Browsers and Operating Systems and is used by journalists, web designers and developers as a benchmark of the technology used to view websites.
December 2010 — Facelift
A major change to the design of Statcounter in 2010 included user interface improvements throughout the site and a plethora of new features.
January – August 2013 — New Features
2013 saw the launch of some significant new features in Statcounter, including Filters, Incoming Traffic and Paid Traffic.
February 2014 — API Launch
The Statcounter API, launched in early 2014 gave developers direct access to StatCounter data allowing them to build scripts, custom reports, widgets and apps.
September 2014 — iOS & Android Apps Launch
The launch of our iOS and Android apps enables Statcounter members to keep track of their websites while on the move.
October 2017 — UI Redesign
2017 saw substantial changes are to the look and feel of the Statcounter website and user interface. Redesigned from the ground up, priority was given to clarity and ease-of-use by improving the layout, typography, colours, icons, spacing and visual hierarchy.
November 2017 — Visitor Alerts
The addition of Visitor Alerts towards the end of 2017 enabled you to set notifications for when individual visitors are looking at your website. An extension of the Visitor Labels feature, alerts help you keep track of important visitors that revisit your site.
July 2018 — Simplified Navigation & Reports Dashboard
Over the years, the left sidebar navigation had grown to a list of over 30 items. This 2018 update cleaned up the navigation and grouped all the aggregate stats reports together in a new Reports dashboard.
February 2019 — Learning Center, Success Stories, Newsletter
One of our new year’s resolutions for 2019 was to actively help our members be more successful online. The launch or our Learning Center and Success Stories sections coincided with a revamped email newsletter to include feature stories from other Statcounter members on their business and processes, advice on digital marketing, how to get the most out of Statcounter and more.
September 2019 — Page Analysis
In September we launched the Pages and page Analysis feature. This section displays trends for individual pages on your site with a breakdown of referrals from search engines, other websites, social media and paid traffic campaigns.
2020 & Beyond
20 years later, our mission is still the same, to help our members understand their users. We’ll be continuing to work on this mission, to deliver even better insights into your users to help you to make the best decisions for your success.
Thank you so much to everyone who has supported Statcounter over the past 20 years and here’s to the next 20!
Does your website have a goal?
Off-page Optimization | Local SEO for Photographers
New Reports Dashboard & Simplified Navigation
Redesigned with you in mind, a clearer and easier to use Statcounter.
Why you need StatCounter if you use Google Adwords
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I grew up with building websites on DreamWeaver and other platforms. StatCounter was one of the first things I put on my GeoCities website, before GA even existed.
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Wow.. Finally we reached 20 years of startcounter. Congrats a lot.
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Posted on February 9, 2020 at 8:36 pm
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Nice, to 20 more years. Keep up the good work. 🙂
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I am very happy you are celebrating 20 years of Stat counter live website. I have been the member of you from last 5 years, each and every blog of this channel i have read. I will tell my colleges to keep subscribing your blog.
Posted on February 7, 2020 at 9:42 am
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Love the features of statcounter
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Medievalists at Leeds, Faversham and Canterbury
Before I come to the Centre’s involvement in this year’s Medieval Pageant in Canterbury which took place today, I thought I would just mention a couple of other events that have involved Centre and Canterbury Christ Church medievalists over the last week. Firstly, before the King’s School broke up for the summer, I met up with Janet Taylor who runs Classics there to broach the idea of running a sixth form workshop again next academic year for Classics students. Janet was enthusiastic, and I’m also hoping to keep the same link going with Claire Anderson concerning her lower and upper form historians.
Diane with the founders of Faversham Abbey
Keeping with the idea of engaging with schoolchildren, James Sladden, a history teacher at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School on Wednesday launched the Centre’s essay writing competition for Year 7 and 8 pupils at the school. The competition has two strands, a short story or a research piece that takes as its inspiration items in the ‘Medieval Faversham’ exhibition that opened today at 12 Market Place, Faversham – the town’s new ‘Heritage Hub’. Dr Diane Heath, her son Harry and I put the final items up yesterday, to which were added two of the town’s charters today. These are the town’s copy of the 1300 Magna Carta and its charter about the town’s privileges granted by Henry VIII. There will be more on ‘Medieval Faversham’ in the next blog because I’ll be joining Diane and Dr Pip Gregory next Saturday when the exhibition will be open again to the public – please do come and join us, the exhibition opens at 10 am and ‘young medievalists’, please bring a responsible adult, can start making ‘medieval’ items from 11 am. This week Diane was ably assisted by Harriet Kersey, who very nobly agreed to help with these ‘Young Medievalists’ Corner’ activities even though she was recovering from a hectic time at the Leeds International Medieval Congress 2018.
Harriet greets King Stephen and Queen Matilda (photo: Diane Heath)
This medievalists’ conference had included a large number of postgraduates from Christ Church and several staff members from both History and English. I don’t have room to go into detail about all the presentations these postgraduates and staff gave at Leeds, but I will give you a roll call of everyone this year. To avoid any sense of hierarchy, I will run through the list in the order in which they appeared in the programme, in other words from those who gave papers on Monday to those who gave presentations on Thursday. I shall begin with Dr Michael Bintley, who has just left CCCU to take up a post at Birkbeck. Mike’s topic was Eanswythe’s landscape or what the project team is beginning to discover about 7th century Folkestone. Dr Leonie Hicks joined him in this Monday morning session where she spoke on how Norman history writers created what she calls a ‘miraculous landscape’. Tuesday afternoon saw two papers by CCCU History postgraduates. Lily Hawker-Yates considered the memorialisation of burial mounds by early and post-Conquest poets and chroniclers, including the case of King Harold’s burial said to have been under a mound overlooking the sea near the site of the battle of Hastings. The other speaker that day was Harriet Kersey who discussed the case of the abduction of Eleanor de Ferrers and what this case can tell us about dower for 13th-century noblewomen and their considerable vulnerability from predatory aristocrats in search of land. The following afternoon it was the turn of Dean Irwin who examined the activities of a 13th-century Anglo-Jewess. That same afternoon Andrew Connell took us back to aristocratic considerations when he explored the affinity of the de Lacy Constables of Chester and the Earls of Lincoln in the 13th century. And in the same session Adrian Jobson investigated Richard of Cornwall and the reconciliation process post the battle of Evesham. Thursday brought the final three papers, I explored commemoration narratives using William Browne’s hospital in Stamford, Lincolnshire as my case study, Abby Armstrong examined the surviving letters of Henry III and his daughter Princess Beatrice, and Charlotte Liebelt discussed royal authority in terms of the Norman Conquest as seen in 12th and 13th century English literature. As you can see from this diverse and fascinating range of topics, medieval studies are alive and well at Canterbury Christ Church.
Dragons at Leeds, the green one was a fire-breathing monster
This brings me to the Medieval Pageant where the Centre was based at the Greyfriars Gardens off Stour Street once again. Professor Louise Wilkinson was ably assisted by Dr Paul Dalton and me, and a large band of history students from Christ Church (in no particular order): Hollie Cleaver, Alisha McDonagh, Rebecca Capper, Sam Jaconelli and Sienna, Chloe Luxon, Holly Bringes, Michael Byrne, Nicole Custer, Victoria Mitchell, Andrew Leach (a regular Centre stalwart) and Amy Licence. Victoria were happy to dress in period costume and really looked the part, and as well as helping at the Greyfriars Garden some of the students helped at other venues on the family trail around the city, such as Eastbridge Hospital and the Westgate Towers.
Canterbury welcomes the first two giants.
As in previous years the pageant itself drew large crowds as it made its way from the Westgate Towers to Rose Lane and finally ended outside the Marlowe Theatre. The number of giants is steadily increasing and this year there were five. This was great but I’m still waiting for St George and the dragon because this was one of the pageants performed in Canterbury annually on 7 July in the later Middle Ages according to the documentary sources. The St Thomas pageant also used a puppet for the saint and it would be great to see his reappearance, especially because the timing of the modern pageant relates to the feast day of St Thomas’ translation, an event that took place in 1220. Sandwich, too, seems to have had a puppet of the ‘villain’ Eustace the monk, probably a giant, in the later Middle Ages if not before which was presumably paraded through the town on the feast day of St Bartholomew – marking the saint’s intervention on the side of the English against Eustace and the French at the Battle of Sandwich in 1217 and the (re)foundation of the town’s St Bartholomew’s Hospital.
Chloe and Holly helping young medievalists create their stained glass window.
To return to the Centre’s presence in the Greyfriars Gardens, the Centre’s child-friendly activities this year were design your own shield, make your own stained glass window and design your own crown. I think the stained glass window activity was the most popular but the other two also attracted very good numbers and for each of these activities there were some brilliant pieces of work. Although primarily for children, several adults couldn’t resist having a go, and the same occurred at Eastbridge Hospital where the activity was make your own pilgrim badge complete with bell. Both stations of the trail did well for visitors and over 670 people came into the Greyfriars Gardens, often in search of that all important stamp on their cards towards a large chocolate coin – a minimum of 5 stamps (stations) required from around the city.
Also stationed in the Greyfriars Gardens was Marion Green, the education officer at Canterbury Archaeological Trust, whose display included a scale model of Canterbury Castle – always popular, several archaeological finds including a goat’s skull, a Roman lamp and some of the contents of a local medieval cesspit – good for environmental finds such as fruit stones and evidence of parasites that lived in the guts of medieval people.
The fletcher discussing his trade.
Another way of learning about the past is through experimental archaeology as practised by re-enactors, the Milites de Bec group, who are very careful to make and use materials as they would have been used at particular times in the Middle Ages. As last year the Centre was lucky enough to have the re-enactors’ village, complete with the two mounted knights stationed in the Gardens. This meant that after they had returned from the Pageant, they were very popular among visitors to the Gardens who were able to watch spinning and needlework, talk to a ‘brother’ of the Knights Templar, find out about medieval knights and their horses, and learn more about the work of fletchers, including the finer points of arrow making and the varying wounds such arrows could cause, as well as how these wounds from longbow arrows differed from those by crossbow bolts.
Considering this afternoon coincided with the England football match and yet another swelteringly hot day, the numbers and obvious enthusiasm were great to see, and the Medieval Pageant seems to be going from strength to strength, which is excellent for the city and the involvement of Christ Church’s growing band of medievalists! And next week it will be ‘Medieval Faversham’.
Sheila Sweetinburgh
Abby Armstrong, Adrian Jobson, Andrew Connell, Andrew Leach, archaeology, archives, artefacts, Battle of Hastings, Battle of Sandwich, Birkbeck, book culture, Canterbury, Canterbury Archaeological Trust, Canterbury cathedral, canterbury city, Canterbury Greyfriars, Charlotte Liebalt, community history, conferences, Dean Irwin, documents, Dr Diane Heath, Dr Leonie Hicks, Dr Michael Bintley, Dr Paul Dalton, Dr Pip Gregory, Eastbridge Hospital, Eustace the monk, Faversham, Faversham Heritage Hub, Finding Eanswythe, Folkestone, Harriet Kersey, Henry III, historic buildings, history from below, Kent, King Harold, King's School Canterbury, Knights Templar, lectures, Leeds International Medieval Congress, Lily Hawker-Yates, local and regional history, Louise Wilkinson, Magna Carta, manuscripts, Marion Green, Marlowe Theatre Trust, Medieval Faversham, Medieval Pageant, Middle Ages, Milites de Bec, pilgrimage, primary sources, Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, St Bartholomew's hospital, St George, St Thomas Pageant, Stamford, talk, Thomas Becket, warfare, Westgate Towers, William Browne's Hospital
academic, archaeology, Blog Posts, Canterbury, conference, Events, festival, Kent, local and regional history, Middle Ages, News
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Hearing Voices from a Broken Disc
Posted on January 9, 2017 (March 20, 2017) by Janet Gertz
Hearing the voices of people who lived in another century brings them close to us, but early recording technology makes hearing them a challenge. In the first half of the 20th century a common recording method was to use discs with a lacquer surface. Sound waves caused a stylus to vibrate and cut grooves into the lacquer while the disc turned. The recording was played back by running another stylus through the grooves and amplifying the sound. The inner core of the discs was metal, cardboard, or even glass. Playing these old recordings is a problem – the lacquer deteriorates over time, developing cracks and sometimes detaching from the core, and of course glass is easily broken.
Until a few years ago, a broken record was a lost cause – while conservators can repair many types of damage, they cannot put broken glass recordings back together again. But in 2013 scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory developed IRENE (Image Reconstruction Eliminate Noise, Etc.), a digital imaging system that can make a picture of the grooves on a disc and then transform the images into digital sound files. Carl Haber, the lead scientist and a Columbia graduate, won the MacArthur Fellows award for his work. (For more on Haber and how he developed IRENE, see this article in Columbia College Today).
Glass disc, WNEW Join the News Reel, 10 February 1944, American Bureau for Medical Aid to China 1937-2005, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University
Like many other libraries and archives, Columbia has its share of glass and other fragile recordings. When IRENE became available from the Northeast Document Conservation Center, we sent off this disc from 1944 to test the new service. The disc had shattered and small fragments along the edges of the breaks had been completely lost. Using IRENE, each surviving fragment was separately imaged, and then the entire recording was digitally reassembled. Pops and clicks can be heard where bits of the lacquer were missing, but this recording of WNEW’s Join the News Reel from 10 February 1944, broken decades ago, now speaks once more.
https://blogs.cul.columbia.edu/longview/files/2016/11/RBML_ABMAC_13_JoinTheNewsReel_4079642-1_clip-1.mp3
Learn more about IRENE at NEDCC.
The IRENE system at the Northeast Document Conservation Center, mounted on a vibration-damping pneumatic air table. Photo courtesy of Northeast Document Conservation Center.
Posted in Audio Preservation, Digitization
The Complexity of Color – Creating Digital SurrogatesHebrew and Judaica Manuscripts Project
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MARIKO MORI with Jessica Holmes
COSIMA VON BONIN with Eleanor Heartney
MARTIAL RAYSSE with Alex Bacon
LUCAS ZWIRNER with Thyrza Nichols Goodeve
SYLVAIN BELLENGER with David Carrier and Joachim Pissarro
It Just Gets Out of Hand: JOHN COHEN with Stephen Ellis
David Levi Strauss on Leon Golub
Thyrza Nichols Goodeve on Leon Golub
Tom McGlynn on Leon Golub
Susan Harris on Leon Golub
Jan Avgikos on Leon Golub
Mary Ann Caws on Leon Golub
CARRIE MOYER: Pagan’s Rapture and Seismic Shuffle
Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables
By Jason Rosenfeld
CYPRIEN GAILLARD: Nightlife
NATHLIE PROVOSTY: My Pupil is an Anvil
By Will Fenstermaker
ROBERT GOBER: Tick Tock
By Pac Pobric
ARLENE GOTTFRIED: A Lifetime of Wandering
By Anna Dunn
CARISSA RODRIGUEZ: The Maid
By Andreas Petrossiants
Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil
By Madeline Murphy Turner
CY TWOMBLY: Coronation of Sesostris & In Beauty It Is Finished: Drawings 1951-2008
MILTON RESNICK: Boards 1981-1984
ALLISON MILLER: Feed Dogs
Thomas Cole’s Journey: Atlantic Crossings
By Joe Bucciero
By Ann McCoy
ZOE LEONARD: Survey
SHEILA HICKS: Free Threads, The Textile and its Prehispanic Roots 1954-2017 & Lifelines
By Grant Klarich Johnson
Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today
By Steven Pestana
ALEXANDRA PIRICI: Co-natural
By Elizaveta Shneyderman
Outrageous Fortune: Jay DeFeo and Surrealism
Place for Continuous Eye Contact (8): A Test-Drive with Mindfulness
By Adam Beal
KES ZAPKUS: New Paintings
MILTON AVERY: Early Works on Paper + Late Painting
ALEX DA CORTE: C-A-T SPELLS MURDER
By Jesse Bandler Firestone
HOWARDENA PINDELL: What Remains To Be Seen
By David Sprecher
MILDRED THOMPSON: Radiation Explorations and Magnetic Fields
CARLOS REYES: West Side Club
By Vijay Masharani
GERWALD ROCKENSCHAUB: Geometric Playground (Flamboyant Edit)
JACOLBY SATTERWHITE: Blessed Avenue
Coop Fund, Amalle Dublon & Constantina Zavitsansos, Devin Kenny, John Neff
By Ian Edward Wallace
MATERIAL WITNESS WITNESS MATERIAL
By Nicole Miller
KARI CHOLNOKY: True Level
By Chris Kaspar
JOHN McALLISTER: cymbals of sleep uncurtain the night
By Alex A. Jones
GREG LINDQUIST: Of ash and coal
RACHEL MASON: Star Death and The Pain Body
By Daniel Gerwin
ISA GENZKEN: Sky Energy
By Jan Avgikos
Violated Bodies: New Languages for Justice and Humanity
By Elleree Erdos
DANH VO: Take My Breath Away
By AV Ryan
RICHARD ALDRICH: Enter the Mirror
JOHAN WAHLSTROM: Life is Good
By Mark Bloch
By Colin Edgington
JENNIFER COATES: Correspondences
BRADLEY EROS: All that is solid melts into eros
JESSE CHUN: Name Against the Same Sound
JEFFREY PERKINS: George
Why Poetry Now
Guest Critic: Ann Lauterbach
Mel Elberg
Jason Labbe
Matvei Yankelevich
Richard Deming
Martha Ronk
Anselm Berrigan
Carla Harryman
Dan Beachy-Quick
Christopher Rey Pérez
Ann Lauterbach
Language is Always a Shared Occasion: FADY JOUDAH with Alex Dueben
Isaac Babel’s The Essential Fictions
By Veronica Scott Esposito
Denis Johnson’s The Largesse of the Sea Maiden: Stories
Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage
Laura Kasischke's Where Now: New and Selected Poems
By Gale Renee Walden
TADZIO KOELB with Michael Natalie
The Disintegrations: ALISTAIR McCARTNEY with Jordan A. Rothacker
Sofia Samatar's Monster Portraits
By Rebecca Rukeyser
Sheryl St. Germain's The Small Door of Your Death
Burns Like Hell
By Eli Zeger
Sexmob and John Medeski at Jazz Standard, March 9th, 2018
Shelley Hirsch: The Flourishing Fields of Reception
By MV Carbon
Not Even Preaching: NYFOS: Protest, February 27, Merkin Concert Hall
April Selections
By Brad Cohan
Mixed Means and Precarious Performance: Dancers on Nick Mauss's Transmissions
By Benedict Nguyen
GESEL MASON with Megan Pugh
By Megan Pugh
Honest Women
Image to Body, and Back Again
Reflections on Reggie Wilson’s Danspace Platform: in Conversation with Drawings and Text
By Gyun Hur and Helly Minarti
Escape from the Internet Swamp: ZACH BLAS with Iván Zgaib
Having Some Space: Dissociation and Generative Embodiment in Basma Alsharif's Ouroboros
By Lydia Ogwang
In the Field: Sharon Lockhart, James Benning, and People
By Steffanie Ling
Berlinale Forum 2018
By Giovanni Marchini Camia
High and Low: The Light and Shadows of Kazuo Miyagawa
Alternating Currents: Visiting Electchester with Adam Kraar
By Ed Cardona Jr
THE DEFIANT POLITICS OF COLLECTIVITY: The Assembly’s SEAGULLMACHINE
By Adam R. Burnett
The Cursed Hunter in the Red Lands (January 1836)
By Douglas Glover
The Threesome (That Eventually Led to Spike Lee)
By Alejandro Varela
The Nameable : on experimental writing
Highlights from the Life of Raymond Roussel #3: Prospecting
inSerial: part seventeen Delusions of Being Observed
By Lewis Warsh
4 stories from Malay Sketches
By Alfian Sa’at
from Ivory Pearl
By Jean-Patrick Manchette, translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith
New Routes in Fiction: ELIZABETH STROUT with Alec Niedenthal
By Joshua Daniel
trick o’death
visual notes on the constitution
By Andrei Codrescu
from ROSWELL/GREENCREST
By Jay Besemer
By Douglas Piccinnini
symbolic philosophy
By Roberto Harrison
Six from Atopia
By Sandra Simonds
Stephen Antonakos: Notes on Public Art
In Part: Writings by Julie Ault
The Collages of Helen Adam
Giorgio Morandi: Late Paintings
Depero Futurista
By Nick Bennett
What Lessons Does the WV Teacher Strike Have for Labor’s Future?
By Ken Fones-Wolf
Disaster Preparedness Is an Illusion
By Natalie Baker
Is Democracy Compatible with Capitalism? Reconstruction in the US, 1863-1877
By Charlie Post
PHIL NEEL with Paul Mattick
Only Connect: A Review of Richard Walker’s Pictures of a Gone City
By Max Moorhead
By 2100 the San Francisco International Airport will likely see half of its runways submerged in water, reports a New York Times article from March. The study referenced in the article argues that land around the Bay Area that previously had been thought to be sinking at two millimeters per year could in fact be sinking by ten millimeters.1 This problem, now commonplace in our changing climate, is not easily ignored, seeing as the Bay Area has more start-ups, social media companies, venture capital, and tech corporations than anywhere else in the continental United States. The new study was done by Manoochehr Shirzaei, a professor at Arizona State University and Roland Bürgmann, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Another professor at UC Berkeley, Richard Walker, has just written a book on the subject of the Bay Area, Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area, which both traces the history of information technology and considers the implications climate change will have for Silicon Valley. In the words of a recent study of the area, “San Francisco won the information age lottery, becoming the world center of that technological revolution.”2 To a millenial such as myself, this “luck” of the Bay Area is obvious, but, as Walker shows, the economic focalization of the Tech Industry in the Bay Area has far little to do with luck.
Walker, Professor Emeritus of Geography, has a wealth of experience writing about the area; he has published three books on California since 1990 on topics ranging from agribusiness to conservation of ecology.3 In Pictures of a Gone City Walker appears comfortable applying his geographer’s lens while conducting a tour de force of class analysis, geographic history, and prediction of the future of the Bay Area’s tech sector. The book gets around to the subject of climate change in the chapter titled “Saving Greenland: Environmentalism in the Age of Global Warming.” He praises the past environmental accomplishments of the Bay Area, “but praising past achievements is no longer enough.” This sentiment could be applied to the entirety of Pictures of a Gone City. Ultimately I was left questioning the point of starting on a positive note—praising the Bay Area’s past environmental, economic, and technological achievements—when these efforts have always been entangled with the exploitative imperatives that Walker criticizes.
The dream of the internet was disintermediation—the removal of the cultural and physical mediators that influence our lives—and yet the internet is mediated by wires and physical infrastructure that is vulnerable to climate change. The type of disintermediation that we now call “connecting” on the internet, both to other users and to the information that is being organized, is ultimately only the illusion of disintermediation. Our lives on the internet are mediated by algorithms and software, and even by the font on your favorite social media platform. Mediators exist on the internet, and their design is inherently political. Walker looks at how we came to trust the infrastructures and creators of the internet. He thinks that “there is more at work here than the love of machines and technologies.” Considering the capitalist idea of progress and the wish to dominate the natural environment, he concludes that the separation of humanity from nature has underpinned the dream of capitalism (he invokes the famous Marx quotation, “all that’s solid melts into air.”) This feeling of immateriality in many ways perfectly describes the internet.
Walker takes time to describe a world which is now quite familiar. As he spends the opening chapters describing the terrifying—albeit fascinating—ahistory of Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, he is not only nostalgic, but even expresses wonder at the world these technology giants have created. He forgets that many of his readers, and most students, grew up in a world where many of these economic and technological changes were already under way; many of the innovations he marvels at are only astonishing to those who can remember a world without them.
Pictures of a Gone City is divided into three parts, the first of which takes a look behind the facade of wealth and celebrity that tends to obscure some of the technical aspects of how Silicon Valley operates. Walker traces the history of growth that has occured in San Francisco since the 1980s. While the rest of the country faltered during the recession, the Bay Area continued full throttle into prosperity with growth in personal income exceeding that in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Boston.
Much of the first part of the book, “The Golden Economy,” looks at the development of enterprise forms that are now commonplace: the startup, social networking sites, and web portals. He acknowledges the effect of the Silicon Valley entrepreneur on the larger economy: “The mythology of the plucky tech entrepreneur has diffused around the world, becoming a key element in the capitalist dream world of today.” The unfurling of Silicon Valley capitalism has not only changed the way we interact with the economy, but also formed a whole generation. If people are socialized to be productive human capital within the economy in which they are raised, then millennials were shaped to be productive within the confines of Neoliberalism. It is from this tech-dominated social imaginary that we seek to escape.4 The internet provides this escape, if only for a few minutes on the subway, or at the office. The escapism the internet offers may feel like connection, but in a time of environmental catastrophe our lives in the virtual world appear more like a disconnection.
In the second half of part one, Walker flips the spectacle of continual upward financial growth on its head, showing how the vast majority of the wealth generated from Silicon Valley is funneled to a handful of billionaires. He illustrates how the housing market has struggled to respond to the quick changes in market caused by the tech industry, and he shows that San Francisco has a higher poverty measure than any other Bay Area county. The reader is not only meant to question why this disparity exists, but to ask who is responsible. In a list of the “Bay Area’s Fifty Billionaires, 2016”5 tech tops the list with a total of 24 billionaires compared to 11 in finance.
Walker understands the problems climate change poses to the physical infrastructure of the internet. The Bay Area sits precariously along the largest estuary on the West Coast. The rising sea levels are only made worse by high tides and coastal storms. King tides, which mostly occur in the winter, can add a foot or two to already enormous storm tides, creating storm surges over 50% larger than regular tides. Walker points out that real-estate developers have been eager in the last decade to buy up low ground, which is needed for most industry, housing, and transportation. While Save The Bay, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving and restoring the San Francisco Bay Area, has done much to stop this development, they may be too late. Although Houston and Miami have “set the bar so low that the Bay Area cannot help but look good by comparison,” Walker makes a contrast with the Netherlands. On an ancient estuary, the Dutch have transformed the Rhine and Scheldt into dry land and have engineered the way the river flows. But Walker does not see this as a likely solution for San Francisco. The studies that have been done, such as the “California Sea-Level Rise Guidance Document” from 2010, have been “strong on warnings but short on specific responses to sea-level rise.” He points out that, although Save The Bay helped vote in Proposition A in 2016—a $25 million per year tax on all property in the nine county Bay Area which goes to the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority—there is only so much that can be done to transform marshlands, and more drastic measures must be taken.
The Rockefeller Foundation is named as giving $5 million in “resiliency design projects” for the region. What is it that they are looking to protect? It is clear that although the dream of the age of Information Technology was to have complete disintermediation and a shift from the physical to the virtual, the physical world is crashing in on all sides, and ecological systems will not bend to the utopian ideals of Silicon Valley. Fires have been tearing through Northern California and in the Bay Area; “farther out, idyllic housing developments for second homes and miniranches are even more exposed. The people who move into such neighborhoods love the sense of open space and contact with nature, and just to put an exclamation point on it they plant up their yards with more trees and shrubbery and fail to adequately prepare safety cordons around their houses. Such places are urban wildfires waiting to happen.” It is ironic that those attempting to leave the city in an effort to reconnect with nature are subject to this violent awakening. Is this the reconnection suburban Californians in the Bay Area are seeking? The planting of shrubbery and trees only illuminates the degree to which the connection is an imaginary one. However, with global climate change nature is no longer something that is acted upon, but something that acts on us. With the realization that nature can no longer be compartmentalized into a cute, controllable state, an escape into the virtual world that Silicon Valley idealizes may seem all the more appealing.
The third part of Pictures of a Gone City traces the “Dreams, Nightmares, and Political Realities” of the Bay Area. Here the analysis turns to global warming, the future of the left, and utopias and dystopias of the IT revolution. In the ninth chapter Walker inquires into the creation of the virtual utopia of cyberculture and disintermediation. He concludes that many of the leaders of Silicon Valley are disconnected from the world they have created. “To their way of thinking” he says “the new digital technologies have opened up vast horizons of possibility for humankind, and with evangelical fervor they have spread the gospel of cyberculture.” While the Bay Area tech giants he investigates indeed spread this gospel of cyberculture, the seeds of their creed had been planted long before many had heard of the internet.
The theory of cybernetics, created by Norbert Wiener when he was a professor of mathematics at MIT, devised a new way of understanding regulatory systems. Wiener set out to explain how we can understand all systems on the basis of treating information as a measurable quantity, allowing it to be studied statisticallly. In his 1950 article, “Cybernetics,” Wiener writes, “any system for the transmission of messages must be continually ready for the transmission of one or the other of a set of alternatives. In order that these alternatives may be read clearly, it is essential that the line be cleared from the confusion of past alternatives. This is done with the aid of filters and similar selective apparatus.” This understanding of information has since been applied to Earth’s systems, humans, and computers.
As the internet broke out of the confines of the military, cybernetic theory was picked up by early tech pioneers, many under the influence of the Bay Area’s psychedelic counterculture. Early internet influencers such as Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalogue, and literary agent John Brockman, were ready for the idea , to use Wiener’s words, of a “selective apparatus filtering the alternatives of transmission”—much of the literature surrounding psychedelic drug use coming out of the Bay Area at the time told a similar story of the human mind. Fred Turner, author of From Counterculture to Cyberculture, notes the connection between USCO, a media art collective Stewart Brand was involved with, and cybernetics: “Light, electricity, and mystical ‘energy’ generally played a role in USCO’s work very much like the one ‘information’ plays in Wiener’s cybernetics: they became universal forces that, functioning as the sources and content of all ‘systems.’”6 The coming together of the Bay Area’s art scene and counterculture with the philosophy of cybernetics shaped the way the web we now know was devised and constructed. To understand the ways in which the web fails to connect us, it is necessary to understand how the creators of the web failed to see us as people.
I often wonder if it is ultimately helpful to see humans as another information system like a computer, taking information as “a quantity which measures order, instead of disorder.”7 I was recently advised by a friend to turn my iPhone colors off, rendering everything black or white. His point was that the color on our phones stimulate us, and much of the time we spend staring at our screens is for the pleasure of this stimulation. The change—texts, photos, email, were all deprived of color—was not hugely noticeable at first, but when I eventually switched the color back on I was shocked. Every app became immensely more appealing. When turned back to black and white, I began to realize the ways in which some differences fade. The blue and green text boxes that distinguish iPhone users had vanished. How was I to discriminate the iPhone users from others—the green clearly being a classed identifier? With no color I began using my phone less on the subway, opting for the less accessible gadget—a novel. When we read a book we live in a world that is black and white, all attention working to piece together words and meaning.
I later learned that the black and white theory was from a lifehacker.com article, and there have been many articles since claiming to disprove the trick. However, I am still enthralled by the need felt by so many people to break the addiction to our phones. If the current structuring of information technology is centered around a philosophical system that views the brain as a giant processing machine meant to measure order instead of disorder, where does this leave us?
Facebook, and all of social media, is one place where disintermediation and cybernetic theory combine, with the result that humans are expected to “connect” more on the internet by breaking down the barriers between people and information. Walker looks at Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, who reiterates that “Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission—to make the world more open and connected.” In a New York Review of Books essay on Facebook, Zadie Smith comments on Zuckerberg’s commitment to connection: “He uses the word ‘connect’ as believers use the word ‘Jesus,’ as if it were sacred in and of itself.”8 The connection that the internet makes us feel by removing mediators—or as Facebook put it with its new motto in 2014, to “move fast and break things”—does not produce greater knowledge, lasting friendships, or opportunity simply by nature of creating connection in and of itself.
Walker understands the falseness of “connection,” even though he praises the good that seems to come out of the interconnected world of the internet. However, he does point to some structural changes that could be made, such as algorithm accountability legislation. In Walker’s eyes, the solution is not to turn away from your phone, but rather to democratize the technology—taking control of the internet out of the hands of technology corporations. Much of the book looks historically at how the internet became commodified, and the jobs this created in the Bay Area. However, as highlighted in the third chapter, this wealth has not been shared, as the Bay Area has one of the most concentrated populations of billionaires, and problems of growing inequality between different strata of the labor force.
The billionaires are continuing to insulate themselves from this inequality. Walker highlights the partnership between Paypal founder Peter Thiel and Patri Friedman, grandson of economist Milton Friedman, as emblematic of neoliberalism, an economic model much indebted to Milton Friedman, and its entanglement with tech entrepreneurialism. Thiel and Friedman’s organization The Seasteading Institute is working to build completely wired floating islands on the ocean. The institute claims to be “working to provide a machinery of freedom to choose new societies on the blue frontier.” To do this, the institute is building a prototype on a Polynesian lagoon. While the wealthy will float on the rising seas, the locals will be left to fend for themselves.
Elon Musk, who co founded Paypal with Thiel, is also devising plans for escape. “Technotopian escapism,” Walker says, “is fully manifest in Elon Musk’s obsession with rockets and establishing a colony on Mars. Tesla’s Musk has created a space exploration company, SpaceX, to carry out his scheme.” The dream of space travel is much like the idea of the internet in offering the promise of escape from physical and ecological realities. However, as the tides rise in the Bay Area, Musk and Thiel might have to find a bigger spacecraft. Thiel imagines that his lifeboat of floating islands will succeed in avoiding the implications of global climate change—but he is wrong. Every device that provides us with the feeling of interconnectedness uses materials that were drilled from the earth, and these devices now clutter landfills and amass mountains of waste. Below the Bay Area run millions of wires, wrapping themselves around the estuary that now is sinking into the sea. Information technology and cyberculture intend us to leave the physical ecological setting to which we are bound. However, as tech billionaires plan their next attempt at escape, the natural world is closing in on all sides.
Pictures of a Gone City surveys almost every aspect of internet technology in the Bay Area. The book is published by Spectre, and it is easy to see it being courselisted. Many of the chapters—all exceptionally well researched—could stand on their own. The book’s strength is its scope; its main weakness is that there are issues that Walker touches on and quickly abandons, shifting his lens elsewhere. While this gives an all-encompassing view of the Bay Area’s relationship to IT, the focalization of the book is unclear, and Walker does not present one clear thesis or solution to the problems he identifies. At its strongest, Pictures of a Gone City demonstrates Walker’s skill as a geographer. The reader truly gets a feeling for the landscape where the action is taking place. If there is one thread tying the whole book together, it is San Francisco itself, and Walker’s deep feeling for the fate of his city.
Griggs, Troy. “More of the Bay Area Could Be Underwater in 2100 Than Previously Expected.” The New York Times, March 7. 2018
Storper, Michael, Thomas Kemeny, Naji Philip Makarem, and Taner Osman. The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies: Lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles. Stanford University Press, 2015.
And see his article “It’s (Still) Chinatown, Jake”, in Field Notes, November 2015.
Harris, Malcolm. Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials. Little, Brown, 2018.
Source: Guzman 2016 based on Forbes 400 annual list.
Turner, Fred. “Stewart Brand Meets the Cybernetic Counterculture.” From Counterculture to Cyberculture. The University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Wiener, Norbert. “Cybernetics”. Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 3, No. 7 (April 1950)
Smith, Zadie. “Generation Why?” The New York Review of Books. November 25, 2010.
Max Moorhead
MAX MOORHEAD is a writer, editor, and artist based in Ridgewood, Queens.
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Posted inBuildings, Featured, Ivanhoe Village
Historic Ivanhoe Building Loses Name to Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Center
by Matthew Broffman November 5, 2013
The old OUC water and light plant just off Lake Ivanhoe at 1111 North Orange Ave [GMap] became the Dr. Phillips Center for Performing Arts more than a decade ago. But as of last week that was no more. The sign on the building was suddenly removed and there doesn’t appear to be any plans to put up another sign. Leaving the building without a name.
OUC manages the building and we had reached out to them in August about the fact that the name would be confusing with the new Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Center. At the time an OUC spokesperson told us “Changing the name of the building has been discussed, but a timeline or final decision has not been made.”
From what we had heard no one wanted to pay for a new sign. Names that were tossed around included Della Phillips Performing Arts Center (the Mrs. to the Dr.), the Historic Ivanhoe Building and just Ivanhoe.
Things got a little more complicated when mold in the building forced the arts groups that had been occupying the building to leave.
The fate of the building still isn’t determined but we can’t imagine that the City would allow a building that was added to the local register of historic places in 1987 to be torn down.
We reached out to Tim Trudell, an OUC spokesperson about the removal of the sign. Here’s what he had to say:
It was originally called Ivanhoe. Now, it doesn’t have a name. We didn’t remove the sign, but are aware of it. Dr. Phillips [Foundation] is represented on the Ivanhoe board and had asked for the name to be changed prior to this mold discovery to avoid possible confusion with DPAC.
So who removed the sign? We thought that the City of Orlando might have removed it since the Mayor and other elected officials will most likely be attending the lighting of the Happy Holidays Sign on top of this building. Plus, we did notice that the name of the building in the invitation we received last week from the City was the “Historic Ivanhoe Building.” A spokesperson for the City wasn’t able to confirm in time for publishing that the City didn’t remove the sign.
So for now no one knows who removed the sign and here at Bungalower we’ll be calling it the Historic Ivanhoe Building. Any other name suggestions?
Click here to help support the Happy Holidays Sign on the Historic Ivanhoe Building >>
Here’s a picture of the building with the Dr. Phillips sign on it:
Tagged: Dr. Phillips Center
David Brotherton says:
Should be gutted, repaired and back side facade modified to serve as Ivanhoe/UpTown area SunRail stop/station. A proper stop …like with mixed use: arts, offices, coffee shop, bistro, and info desk inside. I like “UpTown Arts Annex” 🙂
pegi djerdj says:
I HAD HEARD THE BUILDING WAS GOING TO BE REPAIRED. NOT NOW ? IF THE ARTS COME BACK, WHICH WOULD BE VERY TRADITIONAL, WHY NOT CALL IT “IVANHOE PERFORMING ARTS “. DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE BALLET GROUP ARE TRAINING NOW? THANK YOU FOR YOUR PUBLICATION. PEGI
Matt Sokoloff says:Article author
Here’s some more information on where the art’s groups are at:
https://bungalower.com/2013/10/arts-groups-displaced-by-mold-in-ivanhoe-ouc-building-find-temporary-homes/
No one knows yet what they will end up doing with the building.
Bungalower says:
I think that’s why we have to stay involved and informed about what’s happening with the building. As of right now no one had mentioned that and both OUC and the City have commented on it’s historical importance.
Donna Whoodat Davis says:
I’m sure the city will just have it torn down like everything else.
Sorry not my style. All you get is sounds bites off of that not any changes. You should talk to the TV stations if that’s what you want 🙂
Bill Laley says:
Corner Buddy and ask the hard questions
Popcorn Flicks in the Park: Thunderball
Winter Park Central Park
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Gremlin is a Key Pro-fibrogenic Factor in Chronic Pancreatitis
Steady epigenetic silencing of is normally a common event in hepatocellular
June 17, 2019 / Salvador Moreno
Steady epigenetic silencing of is normally a common event in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells, which is connected with unusual cell liberation and proliferation from cell cycle arrest. di- and trimethylations had been preserved at high amounts through the silencing of during the tumor development. This unique chromatin pattern may be a heritable marker of epigenetic rules for silencing during the developmental process of hepatocellular carcinogenesis. in pancreatic adenocarcinoma, glioblastoma, particular leukemias, non-small cell lung malignancy, and bladder carcinoma (10, 11), which is definitely caused by mutations and homozygous deletions, the silencing of in HCC is definitely caused primarily by epigenetic modulations, including DNA hypermethylation, in association with repressive histone modifications, H3K27 trimethylation, and H3K9 di- and trimethylation (2, 3, 12,C14). However, the present outcomes shown the steady epigenetic silencing condition in full-fledged cancers or malignancies cell lines, the first epigenetic status Hycamtin inhibition before the transcriptional repression of in HCC initiation continues to be largely unknown. This greater understanding may enable the detection and pre-diagnosis at an early on stage of HCC development. Nuclear reprogramming can reset the aberrant epigenetic modulations of cancers cells. In the last research of nuclear cloning, mouse melanoma, embryonic carcinoma (15, 16), and medulloblastoma (17) could be reprogrammed to aid normal advancement, however the malignant features regained after getting transplanted promoter (24, 27). In this extensive research, aberrant epigenetic silencing of in the mouse HCC cells could be reactivated by fusion with mouse Ha sido cells. After differentiated was silenced by deposition of H3K27 trimethylation initial and H3K9 dimethylation steadily, whereas a higher degree of H3K4 methylations held during. These outcomes indicate which the enrichment of H3K27 trimethylation can be an early event of steady silencing of in the mouse HCC advancement course. EXPERIMENTAL Techniques Cell Lines E14 ESCs had been cultured in Glasgow least essential moderate (Invitrogen) filled with 10% Mouse monoclonal antibody to Protein Phosphatase 1 beta. The protein encoded by this gene is one of the three catalytic subunits of protein phosphatase 1(PP1). PP1 is a serine/threonine specific protein phosphatase known to be involved in theregulation of a variety of cellular processes, such as cell division, glycogen metabolism, musclecontractility, protein synthesis, and HIV-1 viral transcription. Mouse studies suggest that PP1functions as a suppressor of learning and memory. Two alternatively spliced transcript variantsencoding distinct isoforms have been observed knock-out serum substitute (Invitrogen), 1% fetal bovine serum (HyClone, Logan, UT), 1% penicillin/streptomycin/glutamine, 1% nonessential proteins (Invitrogen), 0.1 mm 2-mercaptoethanol, 1 mm sodium pyruvate, and 1000 systems/ml leukemia inhibitory aspect (ESGRO, Chemicon, Temecula, CA). The mouse hepatoma cell series Hepa1C6 was cultured in high blood sugar Dulbecco’s improved Eagle’s moderate (Invitrogen) filled with 10% fetal leg serum (Invitrogen) and 1% penicillin/streptomycin/glutamine. Thymocytes gathered from Hycamtin inhibition 6- to 8-week-old green fluorescent proteins transgenic mice had been passed via an 18-measure needle many times to make single-cell suspensions. Era of Transgenic Cell Lines To create the transgenic mES cell lines, cells had been transfected using a replication-incompetent lentiviral vector having a hygromycin level of resistance gene and an RFP gene. Forty-eight hours after viral transduction, hygromycin B (Invitrogen) was contained in the moderate at a focus of 25 g/ml for 14 days. Following medication selection, specific colonies had been picked and extended into cell lines. To create drug-resistant malignancy cells, Hepa1C6 cells were transfected having a neomycin resistance gene and a green fluorescent protein gene with the Effectene Transfection Reagent kit (Qiagen). Forty-eight hours after transduction, neomycin (Invitrogen) was included in the tradition medium at a concentration of 100 g/ml, and individual colonies were picked at day time 14 and expanded into cell lines. Cell Fusion For polyethylene glycol fusions, cells of each type (generally 5 106) were combined in serum-free Glasgow minimum amount essential medium inside a conical tube and pelleted. After the supernatant was aspirated, the pellet was broken by soft tapping, and 1 ml of 50% w/v polyethylene glycol 1500 (Roche Diagnostics, Basel, Switzerland) prewarmed to 37 C was carefully added. Cells had been incubated in the 50% polyethylene glycol alternative for 1 min with periodic stirring. After that, 1 ml of moderate was added over an interval of just one 1 min. Subsequently, yet another 3 ml of moderate was added. Cells had been centrifuged, as well as the supernatant was discarded. The pellet was resuspended in comprehensive Ha sido cell moderate and plated. Selection Hycamtin inhibition was used after 48 h using hygromycin (200 mg/ml) and neomycin (100 mg/ml). A fortnight following medication selection, one colonies had been picked and extended under standard circumstances. Karyotype Evaluation A 25-cm flask at 60% cell confluence was treated with 0.04C0.1 g/ml colchicine for 3 h. Cells had been retrieved by trypsinization and treated using a hypotonic (0.56% w/v) KCl solution for 15 min. The cells had been centrifuged at 500 rpm, set by washing 3 x in clean fixative (3:1 methanol:acetic acid), and fallen onto chilly, clean glass slides. The slides were air-dried, stained with 4,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole, and observed under a microscope. Fluorescence-activated Cell Sorting For Hycamtin inhibition analysis of DNA content material, cells inside a 10-cm dish were trypsinized, washed in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), and fixed with 70% ethanol at 4 C for 30 min. RNase A was Hycamtin inhibition added to 500 l of PBS at a final concentration of 20 g/ml. Cells were incubated with this remedy at 37 C for 30 min and then centrifuged at.
Categories: Main
Tags: Hycamtin inhibition
« Since their discovery and characterization, mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) have been Supplementary MaterialsFIG?S1? Vaccine-induced changes in subsets from the B-cell population. of »
© 2021 Gremlin is a Key Pro-fibrogenic Factor in Chronic Pancreatitis
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Opening Night is DAYS Away!
Well, after a super-late night tech rehearsal — on the heels of the debate (OK fine, yes I was late to rehearsal) — I’m a tad bit draggy today.
And incredulous. We open on Saturday night! All the props have been propped, the actors’ heads crammed full of lines, and “Witch, Please” will start its October run in just a matter of days.
This is not a drill. We’re back on the same stage we’ve used for our last two shows, Donny’s Skybox Theater at the Second City Training Center, and it feels great to be back in the space.
Do I sound giddy? I’m a little giddy.
We’ve got a ton of new material, a few old favorites, and so many laughs all ready to go. Oh, and I did I mention there’s booze?
I usually mention there’s booze.
If you’re in or around Chicago October 1, 8, 22 or 29 at 7 pm we’d love to see you there! Tickets are $13. Come hang out!
In or near Chicago in October? Come see “Me Inside Me Presents: Witch, Please,” on October 1, 8, 22 and 29 at Donny’s Skybox Theater at 7 pm. Tickets available at SecondCity.com.
Check out my full-length novels, Her Cousin Much Removed, The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management and Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only), and the sequel, Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) which is now available!
Sign up for my spamless newsletter!
Tags amwriting, chicago, comedy, Second City, sketch comedy, writing
And Sometimes the Future is Bradbury & Orwell
If you’ve read my blog before, then you know I love living in the future. I love the novel ease of a new bit of technology; I love having our corner of the universe at my fingertips. That’s not a metaphor either; if I want, I can visit Pluto:
Or see a galaxy more than 13 billion light years away:
It’s magnificent. Truly magnificent.
Until it isn’t.
With every new bit of technology, it seems we lose a bit of of our privacy. It’s not a de facto requirement, either, that we should. The reality is that the data collected by the companies who make the technology is the real goldmine.
Take those fun little app games. Ever consider the permissions they require? Or what the companies do with all that data they can mine from your phone?
Odds are, they’re selling it.
Which brings me to my real gripe. My productivity was greatly curtailed yesterday when I agreed to what turned out to be a massive Windows update. And now, sitting on the bottom left of my screen, someone named Cortana has invited herself into my home.
With Cortana, the computer’s microphone is always turned on. ALWAYS. AL. WAYS. Even on your login screen (though I believe you can turn that “feature” off). Cortana watches and records everything you do on your computer, ostensibly to improve her results.
Ostensibly.
I think I have her off right now, but I really can’t be sure she’s not still listening. She controls the microphone. Not me.
But beyond something that could be in 1984 or Fahrenheit 451, it seems like a collection of data like never before, and that’s considering Google, who knows what the next question on my mind is going to be after I’ve typed one in. Google, who knows where I’ve been and asks me creepy questions about it, like a stalkery ex who wants you to know he knows.
But Google doesn’t know when I start typing and stop typing in my word processing program, coincidentally also from Microsoft. It doesn’t know the content of my spreadsheets. It doesn’t know if I’m playing a game on my PC, or using photo editing software, or watching TV while I work on the computer.
Cortana would know. She’d be able to hear what the show was, too. The operating system sees all.
Take, for example, this reassuring line from the privacy agreement:
“However, we do not use what you say in email, chat, video calls or voice mail, or your documents, photos or other personal files to target ads to you.”
Note Microsoft isn’t saying that they don’t collect this data. They are tacitly admitting that they do. They are only saying that they don’t use it for advertising.
How very generous.
Our privacy could easily be assured, even with the use of this kind of technology. The data collected, for example, could just stay local and never be reported to Microsoft.
But that’s not how it works. Nope, we are simply money-generating units in the new future machine.
Tags cortana, future, privacy, sci fi, science fiction, technology
A Spider for a Role Model
There is an enormous spider outside my window. It’s just building a web, as though building a web outside my window is the most natural thing in the world to do. It’s undeterred by the wind or the height or the fact that it finds itself smack-dab in the middle of a vibrating metropolis.
It’s just building a web.
I wish I had that kind of singular focus. Alas.
Last night I volunteered to create yet another prop. Why? Don’t ask me, I have no idea. But one of our actors is going to have to bite a blood capsule. A writer and I did some blood experiments, and apparently the pre-made capsules taste horrendous.
Horrendous.
So I wanted to make him some capsules that won’t make the rest of the show so unpleasant for him. Homemade blood is extremely easy to make.
Maybe I wanted to be a mad scientist. Just a tad.
Monday I talked about my magpie focus, and over the last few days, it really hasn’t abated. One task at a time. It’s so tough to take on one task at a time.
Unless you’re a spider.
Tags amwriting, comedy, focus, writing
Monday Morning Magpies
Rubens Peale [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
I’ve got a little case of the Monday Morning Magpies. Well, maybe not a little one. Maybe kind of a big one.
What are those, you say, hypothetical reader? They sound like a minor-league baseball team, or maybe an indoor soccer league?
Why thank you for thinking I’d be so sporty, hypothetical reader! You always know the right thing to say. But no, not that at all.
My eyes are falling on everything and anything shiny. Oh look! An email! Oh look! A tweet! Oh look! Another tweet! That’s more tweets!
I meant to use my go-to grounding technique, the humble to-do list, but something grabbed my attention before I grabbed the pad and pen. I’m pretty sure it was coffee, but I wouldn’t swear to it.
Didn’t quite catch that, hypothetical reader? Why not do it now? Because right now I’m blogging. See? The blogging? Of the blog?
In the genius words of a genius writer, so it goes.
Often this kind of distractibility precedes a spate of creativity. I think it’s my brain’s way of preparing to catch the ideas as they scatter, darting in all directions to collect them like some kind of video game. It’s a signal to get the net ready, because when they go, they go.
It’s times like these that my mind forges strange connections, stockpiles “what ifs.” That harvest moon isn’t only for crops.
I think the writing season has begun.
Tags amwriting, focus, ideas, writing
My Super Secret Vacation Location!
Earlier this week, I mentioned my upcoming trip, and I’m so excited about it, I can’t hold it in anymore. So here’s a fun little game. It’s what these three things have in common (and Jon, Lorinda and Kristin, if you guys are reading this post, no fair guessing, you already know…though I’m going to tell everyone in a second anyway, so I guess they won’t hear you if you call it out).
So this guy:
and this author:
What could it be? WHAT COULD IT BE???
Are you ready for the answer?
OK, here it comes!
If you keep scrolling you will find out that I am heading to…
The home of Diego the Tortoise, host of the most famous finches in history and setting for one of my favorite Kurt Vonnegut novels! With me? I’m going to the:
I KNOW!!! Believe me, I KNOW!! I’m still in shock that it’s happening, though it’s been set for a while. Can you imagine the photos?
You won’t have to. Because I will share them with you. I am not a religious person, but I imagine the feeling a religious person gets when journeying to her/his holy site is similar to the feeling of a scientific person having the opportunity to visit what could be considered the birthplace of the theory of evolution.
It’s far more adventure than I’m used to, but I think it’s just the kind of adventure I need. And I can’t wait to tell you all about it!
n or near Chicago in October? Come see “Me Inside Me Presents: Witch, Please,” on October 1, 8, 22 and 29 at Donny’s Skybox Theater at 7 pm. Tickets available at SecondCity.com.
Tags amwriting, photography, travel, trip, vacation, writing
TV Talk: Binge It! Humans
OK, sci-fi TV buddies, I’ve been going through some serious withdrawal since the gripping, “Orphan Black,” “12 Monkeys” and fantasy fav, “Grimm” fluttered away to hiatus. And don’t even get me started on our year-long time-out from “Doctor Who.”
So, thumbing through my various watch lists, I came across “Humans.” Wow.
A species of my absolute favorite British-American hybrid, “Humans” explores what happens if we have truly human-like artificial intelligence. I’ve got to wonder, given all the science-fiction writers who’ve warned of what will come, why we continue to pursue it, but hey, some people never read to the end.
Unlike much American-based sci-fi, British science-fiction isn’t about explosions and bullets and chases, whether in space or in the future or in the past or on the way from the past into the future. British shows tend to explore the cultural questions, the impact on relationships, the way technology shapes our interaction with the world.
There’s a deeply reflective quality to it, both in the examination of issues and in the sense that it — like all good sci-fi — mirrors us back to us through a more palatable filter.
“Humans” accomplishes all of these things while still remaining captivating television. It’s quick, the plotting inevitable yet not predicable, and the acting is phenomenal.
It’s also got Jen (Katherine Parkinson) from “The IT Crowd,” so, I mean, there’s that. And she’s amazing.
“Humans” airs on AMC in the US and Channel 4 in the UK, and will be released in the UK first; it’s coming back to the US some time in 2017. Plenty of time to catch up! It’s available to stream from Amazon Prime, or directly from AMC, though you’ll need your cable provider info.
In or near Chicago in October? Come see “Me Inside Me Presents: Witch, Please,” on October 1, 8, 22 and 29 at Donny’s Skybox Theater at 7 pm. Tickets available atSecondCity.com.
Tags binge, bingeworthy, British TV, Humans, television, TV, TV Talk
Reveal! Sketch Comedy Show Title and Image!
Well I promised you more on the sketch comedy show for which I’ve been fiendishly making props, and here it is! Me Inside Me’s new show is called “Witch, Please,” and will be running at Donny’s Skybox Theater at the Second City training center in October!
And we’re really excited about this one.
We’ve got our original cast from our first show, and I have to tell you, my co-writers are even funnier than ever, which you wouldn’t think was possible, but there you have it.
As always, there will be booze.
This show is fast-paced, really varied, and this time around, we’re doing music again. And let’s not forget about the props. Obviously the whole show is about the props.
Though the most impressive of the props is being fabricated by someone else, and that sketch alone should be worth the price of admission!
Was that all vague enough for you? Good, then come see the show!
Tags chicago, comedy, donny's skybox, me inside me, Second City, shows, sketch comedy, Witch Please
Photo Time! Brookfield Zoo
This weekend, I paid a visit to Chicagoland’s other zoo: Brookfield Zoo. About 4 times the size of Lincoln Park Zoo, it’s tucked away in the suburb of Brookfield, which is easily accessible, and when I say “easily accessible,” I mean you can get there, but you’re going to sit in traffic, even on a Saturday.
I got pictures, but none that seriously wowed me. I also learned that part of the issue I’ve had since getting my gorgeous new camera is that my SD card is too slow, so I’m not getting the full benefit of the burst. That will be remedied before I go on my trip, which I’ll be talking about later on in the week.
Though it was a lovely day, and the zoo not outrageously crowded, there was just something flatter to me about Brookfield Zoo. Sheds were faded with the paint peeling; the abundant gift shops felt halfhearted and uninspired. The light inside the animal houses was also pretty dim.
You might, if you read regularly, know my concerns about zoos, but I’ll say this: the animals all looked like they were plush versions of themselves, like a menagerie of children’s toys brought to life. Even the rhino seemed like he’d been plucked from the shelf.
Albeit a very large shelf.
Anyway, you’re not here for the words, you want to see some photos, so here we go!
Condors. Huge doesn’t begin to describe them.
This one knew what it was doing, and showed off its wingspan. ENORMOUS.
People actually fed these small monkeys, who were not fenced off from us at all. Don’t feed the animals!
Speaking of huge, this bison was shockingly large. And people are approaching them at Yellowstone?! UHHH…
I mean don’t they look like you could have picked them up at the gift shop?
Why yes, that IS a dead mouse these two American Bald Eagles are about to enjoy.
I think this grizzly is soon to be featured in a shampoo commercial.
Even the camel looked fluffy. Though she wasn’t named Alexander Camelton, like the new baby camel at Lincoln Park.
Please go back to the mouse, eagle.
There were two baby gorillas, but the mom of the little one did not like pictures.
Tags animals, Brookfield Zoo, photos, pictures
No One Is Required to Smile
I have a massive case of the grumps today. Everything is annoying; everything is difficult. The sky is one of those featureless grays, without even the decency to rain. I am frustrated.
With everything.
Perhaps it is a wrong-side-of-the-bed situation. Or maybe the lingering effects of the migraine, which though mostly gone, does not want to be forgotten. Maybe some days are just like that, even if they’re Friday.
And maybe it’s a little bit of the world, too. I’ve been thinking a lot about women lately, how we’re treated, the importance we’re assigned. It’s pretty depressing when the Democratic nominee for President of the United States’ entire platform is dismissed with a “she needs to smile more.”
She needs to smile more.
Yep, it’s a smile that will get us through the thorny issue that is Putin. Smiles will solve Syria. Smiles will keep job numbers in an upward direction. Smiles will fix health care. Smiles will deal with North Korea’s purported recent nuclear test.
From my position of grumpiness, that edict — she needs to smile more — irks me even more than it did when the ridiculous RNC chair with the even more ridiculous name said it. I am not smiling today.
I don’t feel like smiling today.
It’s not my job. And it’s not hers either.
Tags amwriting, musings, sexism, smile, women, writing
TV Talk: Binge It! My Mad Fat Diary
It’s another British show! You all know how much I enjoy my across pondular entertainment, and this one was exceptional. Though I strive to make these TV talks spoiler free, there is one aspect regarding the structure of the show I have to raise, but I’ll try to keep it academic.
Still with me? Fab.
“My Mad Fat Diary” follows Rae, a 16-year-old girl living in Stamford, Lincolnshire in 1996. Recently released from a psychiatric ward, we’re with her, through the tool of her diary, as she navigates teenaged life out in the world. Based on Rae Earl’s (purportedly) real diaries from 1989, published as My Fat, Mad Teenage Diary, it’s a must-watch for anyone who’s ever, you know, been a teenager.
Though it’s about teenagers, it isn’t really for teenagers. It’s a show packed with truths about who you think you are versus how others see you; truths about relationships in all directions; truths about coping, no matter your stage of life.
It’s extremely well-written, with fleshed-out, believable characters, and enough humor to balance its sometimes stark subject matter.
But perhaps the most intriguing thing about “My Mad Fat Diary” (and here’s the possibly spoilerly bit) is the use of the unreliable narrator. It’s very much a first-person story, and that choice is used to excellent effect later on in the series.
It’s those seemingly small writing decisions that accumulate and tell a compelling, must-watch story. And it’s a complete story. The entire show is available to stream on Hulu.
Or binge. I dare you to try to stop.
Tags binge, British TV, My Mad Fat Diary, television, TV, TV Talk
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Alt-right controls Virginia Republican Party
A sitting tribute to a symbol of racism in America.
“The alt-right has taken over the Virginia Republican party,” proclaims Shaun Kenney, former executive director of the group.
John C. Whitbeck Jr. agreed when he submitted his resignation as GOP chairman, saying current Virginia Republican U.S. Senate candidate Corey Stewart uses “racist language.”
Other state Republican leaders, however, have not disavowed Stewart, a known racist running against current Senator Tim Kaine. Many supported Stewart in the Republican primary that gave him the candidacy and others are scared shitless of maladjusted president Donald Trump.
Stewart embraces white supremacists and racists in Virginia and nationwide.
“Controversy is not necessarily a bad thing,” he says, “because it gives you more media attention.”
Stewart draws a lot of media attention, most of it negative, in a state Hillary Clinton carried in the 2016 Presidential Election and where a Republican hasn’t won statewide since 2009.
Stewart openly supported Alabama Sen. Candidate Roy Moore even after reports of Moore’s sexual fondness for underage girls surfaced. He called a GOP opponent a “cuckservative” and labeled teen gun control activist David Hogg “that punk.”
Opponents of Stewart say he turned Prince William County, where he served as chairman of the board, into a racist haven.
Board member Frank Principi, a Democrat, said Prince William began detaining “people who did not look like us — different skin, different clothes, different language.”
Others called Prince William Condado del Diablo — “the devil’s county.”
Many wondered how Stewart, son of a longshoreman in Minnesota, became a hard-core, rapid right-wing Republican. He worked for a while for Foley & Lardner in Washington, DC, as an international trade lawyer, but his politics angered his colleagues, and he left in 2009.
Others questioned his conversation into an “old South Republican,” an odd transformation for a Yankee from a Democratic family. He bought a historic antebellum mansion in Prince William and began frequenting events that championed the Confederate flag and opposed removal of Confederate monuments.
That may have played well in Prince William County and in Southwestern Virginia but didn’t help him in a failed run for governor in 2017.
“You’ve got this guy who is a transplant coming into Virginia trying to out-Southern folks who’ve been here for 400 years,” Brian Schoeneman, a Fairfax Republican, told the New York Times.
Virginia NAACP president Kevin Chandler calls Stewart “treasonous” in his embrace of the Confederate flag and the Confederacy.
“It symbolizes hate. It symbolizes white supremacy,” the Rev. Chandler told the Times. “And something such as that should not be displayed openly in the public.”
Self-described Southern Virginia secessionist George Randall disagrees.
“I’m a secessionist because the federal government is anti-Christian and we’re different culturally,” Randall tells the Times. “The government never surrendered, only the Army. We’re still under Reconstruction.”
Randall and his twin brother provide what they term as “volunteer security” for Stewart That means they show up at his rallies with guns. They promote “a future for white children.”
Stewart hired both his press secretary and a media adviser from the Wisconsin Congressional candidate Paul Nehlen, who advocated deportation of all American Muslims along with other racist positions. Stewart called Nehlin “one of my personal heroes” before disavowing him after coming under fire but still recruited two staff members from him.
Stewart also has ties with Jason Kessler, the white supremacist organizer of the rally in Charlottesville that erupted in violence and left a woman dead in the streets. He appeared with Kessler in a press conference opposing removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a park in Charlottesville.
Stewart also has a strong Kessler supporter, Brian Landrum, on the Prince William County payroll. Landrum appeared on Facebook as part of a chat group that included violent racists and talked of panning another rally in Charlottesville. Landrum’s contribution? Profane comments.
Kessler says he has been in recent contact with Landrum and calls him “a friend.”
Stewart calls all this just “the left calling Trump and other conservatives racists and bigots.”
Yes, Trump and too many self-proclaimed conservatives are racists and bigots. So is Corey Stewart.
(My thanks to Danny Hakim and Stephanie Saul of The New York Times for much of the material for this article.)
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The incidence of adverse events in an Italian acute care hospital: findings of a two-stage method in a retrospective cohort study
Lorenzo Sommella1,
Chiara de Waure2,
Anna Maria Ferriero2,
Amalia Biasco2,
Maria Teresa Mainelli3,
Luigi Pinnarelli1,
Walter Ricciardi2 &
Gianfranco Damiani2
The promotion of safer healthcare interventions in hospitals is a relevant public health topic. This study is aimed to investigate predictors of Adverse Events (AEs) taking into consideration the Charlson Index in order to control for confounding biases related to comorbidity.
The study was a retrospective cohort study based on a two-stage assessment tool which was used to identify AEs. In stage 1, two physicians reviewed a random sample of patient records from 2008 discharges. In stage 2, reviewers independently assessed each screened record to confirm the presence of AEs. A univariable and multivariable analysis was conducted to identify prognostic factors of AEs; socio-demographic and some main organizational variables were taken into consideration. Charlson comorbidity Index was calculated using the algorithm developed by Quan et al.
A total of 1501 records were reviewed; mean patients age was 60 (SD: 19) and 1415 (94.3%) patients were Italian. Forty-six (3.3%) AEs were registered; they most took place in medical wards (33, 71.7%), followed by surgical ones (9, 19.6%) and intensive care unit (ICU) (4, 8.7%). According to the logistic regression model and controlling for Charlson Index, the following variables were associated to AEs: type of admission (emergency vs elective: OR 3.47, 95% CI: 1.60-7.53), discharge ward (surgical and ICU vs medical wards: OR 2.29, 95% CI: 1.00-5.21 and OR 4.80, 95% CI: 1.47-15.66 respectively) and length of stay (OR 1.03, 95% CI 1.01-1.04). Among patients experiencing AEs a higher frequency of elderly (≥65 years) was shown (58.7% vs 49.3% among patients without AEs) but this difference was not statistically significant. Interestingly, a higher percentage of patients admitted through emergency department was found among patients experiencing AEs (69.7% vs 55.1% among patients without AEs).
The incidence of AEs was associated with length of stay, type of admission and unit of discharge, independently by comorbidity. On the basis of our results, it appears that organizational characteristics, taking into account the adjustment for comorbidity, are the main factors responsible for AEs while patient vulnerability played a minor role.
Adverse events (AEs), referred to as healthcare delivering, have been defined as injuries that are caused by medical management rather than the underlying disease [1] and which result in death, life threatening illness, disability at the time of discharge, admission to hospital, or prolongation of hospital stay [2–6]. Considering the complex nature of modern medical practice and the multitude of interventions delivered by now to each patient, a high rate of AEs might not be surprising, but if we only think of Hippocrates’ warning “Primum non nocere”, it is not acceptable at all. Moreover, the delivering of high standard quality of care would be a commitment for every healthcare organization because patient safety is a fundamental prerequisite to quality itself [7]. Nevertheless, AEs while receiving health care, even in technologically advanced hospital settings, are still so disturbingly common that, in 2009, the World Health Organization recognised patient safety as a serious public health issue affecting countries at all levels of development. Indeed, reducing the incidence of patient harm is a matter for everyone involved in health care [8, 9]. Since the 1970’s, epidemiological studies highlighted high rates of AEs experienced during hospital stay, ranging from 3.7% up to 36% [1, 10, 11]. Over the past 20 years, several studies, some of which nationwide, based on hospital records retrospective reviews, conducted in the USA [1, 5], Canada [12, 13], South America [14], Great Britain [6], Denmark [15], France [4], Germany [16, 17], Spain [18, 19], Sweden [20], Australia [21] and New Zealand [22, 23] have shown that the chance of a patient to experience an AE during hospitalization is still too high, ranging between 2.9% and 17%. Furthermore, it was noted that approximately half of the AEs were preventable [3, 16, 17]. Several studies have analyzed predictors of AEs [3, 4, 14, 17–19, 24, 25] such as emergency admission, surgical procedures, patient risk factors (age, gender, co morbidity etc.), length of stay, unit of discharge, organizational factors, human behaviors, and environmental causes. These predictors have been studied through different methods: cross sectional studies, prospective cohort, and retrospective cohort. Other studies [3, 14, 26] in order to evaluate how much co morbidity conditions could influence health outcomes, have used the Charlson Index.
This study is aimed at the following: 1) counting AEs occurring in an Italian acute care hospital by a 2-stage review of hospital charts; 2) assessing organizational predictors for AEs as well as individual risk factors; 3) taking into consideration the Charlson Index as a potential tool to control for confounding related to comorbidity.
Study design and setting
A retrospective cohort study was conducted to examine the incidence of AEs in an Italian acute care hospital. The clinical records included in the study were selected at random starting from the electronic archive of the hospital discharges. The sample included inpatients of all ages, if they stayed >24 h in the hospital and were discharged between the January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2008 (inclusive), day hospital discharges were not included. Inpatient care represented about 72% of the overall admissions in 2008. On the basis of these criteria, the sample comprised of 1,501 discharges, which represents the 7.3% of the overall inpatient admissions in 2008. All the hospital specialties were considered in the study in order to reflect the overall hospital practice. This study involved a two-stage sampling approach. Clinical records were analyzed with tools developed by Charles Vincent and colleagues [6]. The hospital clinical records were screened by two physicians (LP and AB) with experience in clinical risk management. The reviewers were trained by a theoretical-practical training course that lasted two and a half days. In the first stage of the review process (modular revision form 1 - RF1 -), the reviewers screened the records using 16 explicit screening criteria indicating potential AEs, adapted by those of Vincent et al. To test the validity of the process of screening, the two reviewers independently examined the first 10% of clinical records, and they compared assessments to see if they were in agreement with the identification of one or more criteria and the selection of potential AEs. The remaining 90% of clinical records was equally distributed by the two reviewers who reviewed them individually. If a record was screened as positive, the two physicians independently reviewed it. The uncertain cases were re-analyzed by reviewers, and if necessary, by a third reviewer (MTM). After screening, criteria-positive clinical records advanced toward the second-stage of the review and the modular revision form 2 (RF2) was completed. In this stage, each record that was positive for one or more criteria was reviewed independently by two physicians (LP and AB). After reviewing the clinical records, the two reviewers compared assessments to see if they agreed for the presence or absence of an AE. If the two reviewers did not agree, they discussed their differences, as in stage 1, and tried to reach an agreement. If the disagreement persisted after this comparison, the folder was submitted to the person responsible for the operational unit, and that person made the final decision. An additional file shows the Modular Revision Forms 1 and 2 in detail [see Additional file 1].
Regarding the association between incidence and organizational factors, four main indicators were taken into account: 1) length of stay, which was considered as an indicator of exposure; 2) type of admission which was an organizational factor linked to planning skills; 3) referral source which was an indicator of levels of coordination between the referral source of patient; 4) and unit of discharge, which was a structural indicator of the organizational context in which the AE occurred.)
No identifiable human data were used for this study. The data set used in the study is not openly available.
Descriptive statistics were performed to describe a study of population characteristics. A univariable analysis was performed to assess the relationships between AEs and independent variables according to the following: age (<1 years; 1–15 years; 16–44 years; 45–64 years; ≥ 65 years), gender, residence (Lazio region or outside), nationality (Italian, foreign), marital status (single, married, separated, divorced, widowed), admission referral source (emergency department of the same hospital, other unit in the same hospital, different Hospital, specialist), admission type (elective, emergency or compulsory medical treatment), discharge unit (clinical ward, surgery ward, Intensive Care Unit – ICU), length of stay, and the Charlson Index. Chi square and Mann Whitney tests were used to perform the univariable analyses.
Variables whose p-value was less than 0.25 at the univariable analyses were entered a backward stepwise logistic regression model. An additive model was used to perform the analysis. Model goodness of fit was assessed through Hosmer and Lemeshow statistics. The results were shown in terms of Odds Ratio and 95% Confidence Intervals (95% CI).
In order to control for confounding related to comorbidity, the Charlson Index [27] was used. The Index was calculated according to the algorithms developed by Quan et al. [28], and by looking at Enhanced ICD-9-CM Coding in primary and secondary diagnoses. The Charlson Index was calculated by using STATA software version 9.0.
All of the other statistical analyses were conducted by using the statistical software SPSS version 12.0. Statistical significance was set at p = 0.05.
The paper follows the STROBE guidelines for reporting of observational studies [29]. An additional file shows the completed STROBE checklist [see Additional file 2].
Approval of the ethics committee was not required for the study because the Italian legislation (law 211/2003) attains to clinical research studies and does not provide statements on observational studies on routine collected, anonymous data. Data were extracted from routinely collected administrative databases and there was no need to obtain additional data from individual patients. The interventions under study were performed in ordinary or “natural” conditions, irrespective from the conduct of the present study. Because this was an observational retrospective study, patients had already been treated when the study protocol was written. Data linkage was performed by the team directly involved in patients’ care using numerical codes. For the present study, researchers had access only to an anonymous dataset, which ensured patients’ privacy. For these reasons, no personal informed consent to the present analysis was requested from study participants. The permission to medical records consultation was given by Medical Directions of hospitals involved in the study.
A total of 1,501 records were reviewed: 1,415 (94.3%) patients were Italian. The mean age of patients was 60 years (Standard Deviation: 19). One hundred and twenty-one records (8.1%) passed the first step of review process. Out of 121, 46 (3.3%) were judged to be AEs at the end of the second step review. Characteristics of all records are shown in Table 1.
Table 1 Figure of selected inpatients ordinary admissions
The univariable analysis showed that AEs were more common in patients with a longer length of stay, and in patients admitted to the hospital emergency. In fact, among all patients who experienced AEs, 36 (78.2%) were admitted to emergency, vs 10 (21.7%) admitted in election In patients coming from the emergency department of the same hospital as well as from other hospitals who experienced AEs, in fact among all patients experienced AEs, 32 (69.7%) were admitted from the Emergency Department, 10 (21.7%) from a specialists, and 4 (8.7%) came from other hospitals (Table 2).
Table 2 Findings of univariable analysis
In regards to the unit of discharge, 4 (8.7%) patients, which experienced an AE, were discharged from ICU and 9 (19,6%) from surgical wards (Table 2). The length of stay was associated to AEs also (Table 2).
Patients aged at age 65 or older showed a higher frequency of AEs than those younger.
All these variables, together with age, gender, residence, marital status and the Charlson Index were entered in the multivariable regression model. The final model is shown in Table 3 and demonstrates that admission in emergency was associated to a higher risk for AE (OR 3.47, 95% CI 1.60-7.53) as well the length of stay (OR 1.03, 95% CI 1.01-1.04) and the discharge from surgery wards and ICU (OR 2.29, 95% CI 1.00-5.21 and 4.80, 95% CI 1.47-15.66 respectively).
Table 3 Findings of multivariable analysis
This study showed that 3.3% of patients admitted to hospital experienced an AE. There is high variability of the phenomenon, proved by the higher values of prevalence showed in several studies, ranging from 3% to 17% in hospitalized patients [1, 2, 5, 6, 12, 15, 19–21, 23, 30, 31].
Our findings are in line with those reported in the Harvard Medical Practice Study [1] and in a recent work dealing with AEs in Dutch hospitals [17].
The incidence of AEs reported in this study was also lower than the overall 5.2% average which was yielded by a recent Italian multicenter study [32].
As far as risk factors for AEs, in our study, they were associated with length of stay, type of admission, referral source, and discharge unit.
With respect to length of stay, our study showed an association with AEs, in fact, for each incremental day of hospital stay, the related risk was increased by 3%. This result is in line with the international literature, and it might be explained by a prolonged exposure to risk factors [3, 12, 14, 18].
Regarding type of admission, among all patients who experienced AEs, 78.2% were admitted in emergency. This date, in contrast with the finding previously reported by Zegers et al. [3] could be due to the overcrowding of emergency patients. Indeed, as shown in the study of Ackroyd-Stolarz and colleagues, a prolonged stay in the emergency department is associated with an increased risk of any single AE (OR 1.03, 95% CI 1.004 to 1.05) [33]. Overcrowding in emergency departments is also a common phenomenon in Italian hospitals and could be mainly due to a shortage of available hospital beds, which results in prolonged emergency department stays for patients who need emergency admission [34].
Furthermore, Källberg et al. reported that the emergency department environment was described as complex, dynamic, and vulnerable to medical errors. In particular, the emergency department, in relation to communication, competence, triage, accessibility, and medication management, was identified as a possible risk area [35].
In regards to the referral source in the present work, there was no association with AEs, and that could be due to the adequate coordination mechanisms between the referral source of patients and the unit of discharge.
With respect to the discharge unit in our study, 71.7% of AEs were observed in medical wards even though a statistical significant association between the discharge unit and AE was shown only for surgical wards and ICU. As far as surgical wards this results are coherent with literature [12], and these could be mainly due to human factors [17]. As for ICU, several studies reported a high incidence of AEs ranging from 6.9 to 39.2% [36–44]. Moreover, the incidence of adverse events, according to Silberman et al., is proportional to the duration of ICU stay [45].
Relative to several intrinsic risk factors, the high frequency of AEs in patients admitted to ICU suggests that patient vulnerability could play a major role in generating AEs [3, 14, 18, 19, 30]. However, our study doesn’t show any association with comorbidity assessed by the Charlson Index.
The Charlson Index allowed an adjustment of the risk of AEs for comorbidity, and it relied on the evaluation of ICD-9 codes in primary and secondary diagnoses in the medical charts. In our study, we were able to conclude that, even if an underestimation of patient vulnerability was plausible, comorbidity did not have a great impact on the occurrence of AEs [14]. Notwinstanding further studies showed an association between the Charslon Index and AEs even if the methods for Charlson computation were different from ours [3]. Therefore severity of comorbidity could not be a main factor in developing AEs. On the other hand, organizational aspects could be responsible for the increased risk of AEs in particular wards. The study of Aranaz-Andrés reported a relation between the occurrence of AEs and the presence of extrinsic risk factors, such as urinary catheter, peripheral venous catheter, peripherally inserted central venous catheter, central venous catheter, parenteral nutrition, enteral nutrition, nasogastric tube, oesophagogastric percutaneous catheter, tracheostomy, mechanic ventilation or immunosuppression therapy [18]. Indeed, beyond patient vulnerability, the complexity of health-care services also appears to be associated with the development of AEs [18], and prevention also depends on the ability of the hospital environment to adapt to the variety of situations in which AEs occur [2]. Furthermore, a prolonged hospital stay, sure enough, could produce a higher exposure to organizational factors.
In view of what has been said, the use of a double-step tool for the detection of AEs, in association with a monitoring system of organizational factors adjusted for the Charlson index, could provide a useful contribution to clinical risk management.
Our study has some limitations. First of all, AEs were identified by means of a review process that relied on information enclosed in medical records, and this could produce a possible underestimation of AEs [18, 16]. The same reason could be responsible for a misclassification of the unit in which AEs occurred. In fact, our analysis accounted for the unit of discharge and the AEs that were attributed to it. Furthermore, it is probable that the AEs occurred in a different unit if the patient moved from one ward to another during the stay. Anyway it’s plausible that misclassification was not differential being only a dilution of risk possible.
Our study has several strengths. It was performed at the hospital level, which made it possible to have a thorough overview of AEs that occur in one year. Furthermore, the methodology used to identify AEs was based on a two-steps approach, which allowed strengthening the assessment. Two researchers were involved in the second step of the review process, which enabled the identification of AEs. The screening step was performed by two researchers on the first 10% of the clinical records with optimal agreement. Moreover, since the sampling was random, clinical records were not chosen with respect to their complexity. Another strength was related to the method used to account for comorbidity in the Charlson Index, which allowed us to tackle the problem of confounding that could interfere with the impact of organizational factors on AEs. Furthermore, Charlson index may be considered a good proxy of hospital case mix.
In conclusion on the basis of our results, it appears that organizational characteristics, taking into account the adjustment for comorbidity, are the main factors responsible for AEs while patient vulnerability played a minor role.
Hospitals should implement risk management programs and address patients’ safety issues. From this viewpoint, it is fundamental to promote a continuous and timely evaluation of AEs with respect to their frequency, risk factors and costs.
Brennan TA, Leape LL, Laird NM, Hebert L, Localio AR, Lawthers AG, Newhouse JP, Weiler PC, Hiatt HH, Harvard Medical Practice Study I: Incidence of adverse events and negligence in hospitalized patients: results of the Harvard Medical Practice Study I. N Engl J Med. 1991, 324 (6): 370-376.
Michel P, Quenon JL, De Sarasqueta AM, Scemanna O: Comparison of three methods for estimating rates of adverse events and rates of preventable adverse events in acute care hospitals. BMJ. 2004, 328 (7433): 199.
Zegers M, De Bruijne MC, Spreeuwenberg P, Wagner C, Van Der Wal G, Groenewegen PP: Variation in the rates of adverse events between hospitals and hospital departments. Int J Qual Health Care. 2011, 2: 126-133.
Michel P, Quenon JL, Djihoud A, Tricaud-Vialle S, De Sarasqueta AM: French national survey of inpatient adverse events prospectively assessed with ward staff. Qual Saf Health Care. 2007, 16: 369-377.
Thomas EJ, Studdert DM, Burstin HR, Orav EJ, Zeena T, Williams EJ, Howard KM, Weiler PC, Brennan TA: Incidence and types of adverse events and negligent care in Utah and Colorado. Med Care. 2000, 38: 261-271.
Vincent C, Neale G, Woloshynowych M: Adverse events in British hospitals: preliminary retrospective record review. BMJ. 2001, 322: 517-519.
World alliance for patient safety forward programme. 2005, [http://www.who.int/patientsafety/en/brochure_final.pdf]
World Health Organization. 10 facts on patient safety. [http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/patient_safety/en/index.html]
World Health Organization: Global Priorities for Patient Safety Research. Better knowledge for safer care. [http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2009/9789241598620_eng.pdf]
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Baker RG, Norton PG, Flintoft V, Blais R, Brown A, Cox J, Etchells E, Ghali WA, Hébert P, Majumdar SR, O'Beirne M, Palacios-Derflingher L, Reid RJ, Sheps S, Tamblyn R: The Canadian Adverse Events Study: the incidence of adverse events among hospital patients in Canada. JAMC. 2004, 170: 1678-1686.
Forster AJ, Asmis TR, Clark HD, Al Saied G, Code CC, Caughey SC, Baker K, Watters J, Worthington J, Van Walraven C, Ottawa Hospital Patient Safety Study: Ottawa Hospital Patient Safety Study: incidence and timing of adverse events in patients admitted to a Canadian teaching hospital. Can Med Assoc J. 2004, 170: 1235-1240.
Martins M, Travassos C, Mendes W, Pavão AL: Hospital deaths and adverse events in Brazil. BMC Health Serv Res. 2011, 11: 223.
Schioler T, Lipczak H, Pedersen BL, Mogensen TS, Bech KB, Stockmarr A, Svenning AR, Frølich A, Danish Adverse Event Study: Incidence of adverse events in hospitals: a retrospective study of medical records. Ugeskr Laeger. 2001, 163: 5370-5378.
Zegers M, De Bruijne MC, Wagner C, Groenewegen PP, Waaijman R, van der Wal G: Design of a retrospective patient record study on the occurrence of adverse events among patients in Dutch hospitals. BMC Health Serv Res. 2007, 7: 27.
Zegers M, De Bruijne MC, De Keizer B, Merten H, Groenewegen PP, van der Wal G, Wagner C: The incidence, root-causes, and outcomes of adverse events in surgical units: implication for potential prevention strategies. Patient Saf Surg. 2011, 5: 13.
Aranaz-Andrés JM, Aibar- Remòn C, Vitaller-Burillo J, Ruiz-López P, Limón-Ramírez R, Terol-García E, ENEAS work group: Incidence of adverse events related to health care in Spain: results of the Spanish National Study of Adverse Events. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2008, 62 (12): 1022-1029.
Aranaz-Andrés JM, Aibar- Remòn C, Vitaller-Burillo J, Requena-Puche J, Terol-García E, Kelley E, Gea-Velazquez de Castro MT, ENEAS work group: Impact and preventability of adverse events in Spanish public hospitals: results of the Spanish National Study of Adverse Events (ENEAS). Int J Qual Health Care. 2009, 21 (6): 408-414.
Soop M, Fryksmark U, Koster M, Haglund B: The incidence of adverse events in Swedish hospitals: a retrospective medical record review study. Int J Qual Health Care. 2009, 21 (4): 285-291.
Wilson RM, Runciman WB, Gibberd RW, Harrison BT, Newby L, Hamilton JD: The quality in Australian health-care study. Med J Aust. 1995, 163: 458-471.
Davis P, Lay-Yee R, Schug S, Briant R, Scott A, Johnson S, Bingley W: Adverse events regional feasibility study: indicative findings. N Z Med J. 2001, 114: 203-205.
Davis P, Lay-Yee R, Briant R, Ali W, Scott A, Schug S: Adverse events in New Zealand public hospital I: occurrence and impact. N Z Med J. 2002, 115 (1167): U271.
Smits M, Zegers M, Groenewegen P, Timmermans DR, Zwaan L, van der Wal G, Wagner C: Exploring the causes of adverse events in hospitals and potential prevention strategies. Qual Saf Health Care. 2010, 19: e5.
Hayajneh YA, AbuAlRub RF, Almakhzoomy IK: Adverse events in Jordanian hospitals: types and causes. Int J Nurs Pract. 2010, 16 (4): 374-380.
Ouellette JR, Small DG, Termuhlen PM: Evaluation of Charlson-age comorbidity index as predictor of morbidity and mortality in patients with colorectal carcinoma. J Gastrointest Surg. 2004, 8 (8): 1061-1067.
Charlson ME, Pompei P, Ales KL, MacKenzie CR: A new method of classifying prognostic comorbidity in longitudinal studies: development and validation. J Chronic Dis. 1987, 40: 373-383.
Quan H, Sundarajan V, Halfon P, Fong A, Burnand B, Luthi JC, Saunders LD, Beck CA, Feasby TE, Ghali WA: Coding algorithms for defining comorbidities in ICD-9-CM and ICD-10 administrative data. Med Care. 2005, 43 (11): 1130-1139.
Von Elm E, Altman DG, Egger M, Pocock SJ, Gøtzsche PC, Vandenbroucke JP: STROBE initiative: the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) statement: guidelines for reporting observational studies. J Clin Epidemiol. 2008, 61 (4): 344-349.
Davis P, Lay-Yee R, Briant R, Scott A, Schug S: Adverse events in New Zealand public hospitals II: preventability and clinical context. N Z Med J. 2003, 116: U624.
Leape LL, Brennan TA, Laird N, Lawthers AG, Localio AR, Barnes BA, Hebert L, Newhouse JP, Weiler PC, Hiatt H: The nature of adverse events in hospitalized patients: results of the Harvard Medical Practice Study II. N Engl J Med. 1991, 324 (6): 377-384.
Tartaglia R, Albolino S, Bellandi T, Bianchini E, Biggeri A, Fabbro G, Bevilacqua L, Dell'erba A, Privitera G, Sommella L: Adverse events and preventable consequences: retrospective study in five large Italian hospitals. Epidemiol Prev. 2012, 36 (3–4): 151-161.
Ackroyd-Stolarz S, Read Guernsey J, Mackinnon NJ, Kovacs G: The association between a prolonged stay in the emergency department and adverse events in older patients admitted to hospital: a retrospective cohort study. BMJ Qual Saf. 2011, 20 (7): 564-569.
Fornero G, Arione R, Fiandra U, Rapellino M, Bono A, Moiraghi C, Gianino MM: Overcrowding in emergency departments: the case of the San Giovanni Battista (Molinette) university hospital in Turin (Italy). Ig Sanita Pubbl. 2011, 67 (5): 541-552.
Källberg AS, Göransson KE, Östergren J, Florin J, Ehrenberg A: Medical errors and complaints in emergency department care in Sweden as reported by care providers, healthcare staff, and patients – a national review. Eur J Emerg Med. 2013, 20 (1): 33-38.
Valentin A, Capuzzo M, Guidet B, Moreno RP, Dolanski L, Bauer P, Metnitz PG, Research Group on Quality Improvement of European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; Sentinel Events Evaluation Study Investigators: Patient safety in intensive care: results from the multinational Sentinel Events Evaluation (SEE) study. Intensive Care Med. 2006, 32 (10): 1591-1598.
Pagnamenta A, Rabito G, Arosio A, Perren A, Malacrida R, Barazzoni F, Domenighetti G: Adverse event reporting in adult intensive care units and the impact of a multifaceted intervention on drug-related adverse events. Ann Intensive Care. 2012, 2 (1): 47.
Rothschild JM, Landrigan CP, Cronin JW, Kaushal R, Lockley SW, Burdick E, Stone PH, Lilly CM, Katz JT, Czeisler CA, Bates DW: The critical care safety study: the incidence and nature of adverse events and serious medical errors in intensive care. Crit Care Med. 2005, 33 (8): 1694-1700.
Harris CB, Krauss MJ, Coopersmith CM, Avidan M, Nast PA, Kollef MH, Dunagan WC, Fraser VJ: Patient safety event reporting in critical care: a study of three intensive care units. Crit Care Med. 2007, 35 (4): 1068-1076.
Garrouste Orgeas M, Timsit JF, Soufir L, Tafflet M, Adrie C, Philippart F, Zahar JR, Clec'h C, Goldran-Toledano D, Jamali S, Dumenil AS, Azoulay E, Carlet J, Outcomerea Study Group: Impact of adverse events on outcomes in intensive care unit patients. Crit Care Med. 2008, 36 (7): 2041-2047.
Graf J, Von den Driesch A, Koch KC, Janssens U: Identification and characterization of errors and incidents in a medical intensive care unit. Acta Anaesthesiol Scand. 2005, 49: 930-939.
Vriesendorp TM, DeVries JH, Van Santen S, Moeniralam HS, De Jonge E, Roos YB, Schultz MJ, Rosendaal FR, Hoekstra JB: Evaluation of short-term consequences of hypoglycemia in an intensive care unit. Crit Care Med. 2006, 34: 2714-2718.
Rubins HB, Moskowitz MA: Complications of care in a medical intensive care unit. J Gen Intern Med. 1990, 5: 104-109.
Giraud T, Dhainaut JF, Vaxelaire JF, Joseph T, Journois D, Bleichner G, Sollet JP, Chevret S, Monsallier JF: Iatrogenic complications in adult intensive care units: a prospective two-center study. Crit Care Med. 1993, 21: 40-51.
Silberman S, Bitran D, Fink D, Tauber R, Merin O: Very prolonged stay in the intensive care unit after cardiac operations: early results and late survival. Ann Thorac Surg. 2013, 96 (1): 15-21.
Pre-publication history
The pre-publication history for this paper can be accessed here:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6963/14/358/prepub
We thank Joan C. Stevenson for the linguistic revision.
General Direction, San Filippo Neri Hospital Trust, Via G. Martinotti 20, Rome, 00135, Italy
Lorenzo Sommella & Luigi Pinnarelli
Department of Public Health, Catholic University of Sacred Heart, L.go Francesco Vito 1, Rome, 00168, Italy
Chiara de Waure, Anna Maria Ferriero, Amalia Biasco, Walter Ricciardi & Gianfranco Damiani
Medical Direction, San Filippo Neri Hospital Trust, Via G. Martinotti 20, Rome, 00135, Italy
Maria Teresa Mainelli
Lorenzo Sommella
Chiara de Waure
Anna Maria Ferriero
Amalia Biasco
Luigi Pinnarelli
Walter Ricciardi
Gianfranco Damiani
Correspondence to Gianfranco Damiani.
LS participated in the design of the study and provided data. CDW and AMF performed the statistical analysis and helped to draft the manuscript. AB and LP screened and assessed clinical records. MTM contributed in the assessment of clinical records when the other reviewers were not agree. WR revised critically the final version of the manuscript. GD conceived the study, participated in its design and coordination and helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Modular Revision Forms 1 and 2.
Additional file 1: The Modular Revision Forms are tools, adapted by those of Vincent et al. [6], used by reviewers to screen clinical records to detect AEs. (PDF 81 KB)
Additional file 2: STROBE checklist. STROBE checklist for reporting observational research, filled in relation to the present study. (PDF 150 KB)
Sommella, L., de Waure, C., Ferriero, A.M. et al. The incidence of adverse events in an Italian acute care hospital: findings of a two-stage method in a retrospective cohort study. BMC Health Serv Res 14, 358 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-14-358
Received: 18 February 2014
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-14-358
Clinical risk
Ordinary admission
Charlson index
Quality, performance, safety and outcomes
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Home Bollywood News #Chiru152: Trisha Krishnan Opposite Chiranjeevi In Kortala Siva Directorial?
#Chiru152: Trisha Krishnan Opposite Chiranjeevi In Kortala Siva Directorial?
Kollywood actress Trisha Krishnan who was last seen on the big screen in filmmaker Karthik Subbaraj’s directorial Petta with megastar Rajinikanth may play the leading lady in Chiranjeevi’s next which has been tentatively titled #Chiru152.
As per various reports, the Ghilli actress is the top contender for the role opposite megastar.
Prior to Trisha, there were reports about Kajal Aggarwal and Tamannaah Bhatia being approached for the lead role.
However, an official confirmation related to same is to be made by the makers.
Talking about Chiru 152, the film which will be directed by Koratala Siva was launched on the auspicious occasion of Vijaya Dashmi.
The Chiranjeevi starrer will be co-produced by Konidela Production Company and Matinee Productions.
The rest of the cast of the film is yet to be finalized. The Chiranjeevi starrer will go on floors after Diwali.
Talking about Chiranjeevi, the megastar’s Sye Raa Narasimha Reddy is having a great run at the box office. As the film has been liked and appreciated by the audience especially from the Telugu speaking states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
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Jennifer Aniston’s Instagram Debut Almost Sent Instagram “ON A BREAK”
Apart from Chiranjeevi, the magnum opus also stars Amitabh Bachchan, Kiccha Sudeep, Nayanthara, Tamannaah Bhatia, Vijay Sethupathi among others in pivotal roles.
Sye Raa Narasimha Reddy is a period a drama based on the life of freedom fighter Uyyalawada Narasimha Reddy who fought in what is known to be the first war of Independence against the British Rule in India.
Talking about Trisha, from work front, the actress has five Tamil films in her kitty in the form of Garjani, Sathuranga Vettai 2, Paramapadham Vilayattu, Raangi, and Sugar.
The post #Chiru152: Trisha Krishnan Opposite Chiranjeevi In Kortala Siva Directorial? appeared first on Koimoi.
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How to Create a Table of Contents in Microsoft Word
by Bob Flisser 27 Mar 2017
Difficulty:IntermediateLength:MediumLanguages: EnglishEspañolFrançaisBahasa IndonesiaTiếng Việt
Microsoft WordOfficeWritingSoftwareHow-To
When you’re creating or editing a long document, you’ll probably have to create a table of contents. That might sound like a chore, but fortunately, you can do it in just a few clicks. Then, if you change the document, Word can update the table of content instantly.
Best of all, Word includes hyperlinks to the various sections in your table of contents, so it isn't just a visual aid for printed documents, but it's also perfect to make easy-to-browse online documents and PDFs with.
Creating the table of contents in Word itself is simple, but the tricky part is getting it to work the way you want. In this tutorial, I'll show you everything you need to make a simple, auto-generated table of contents, and then get it to look the way you want in every version of Microsoft Word.
How to Make a Table of Contents in Microsoft Word (Screencast)
You can follow along using your own document, or if you prefer, download the zip file included for this tutorial. It contains a document called The Age of Einstein.docx, which is a public domain physics textbook (credit to the author, Professor Frank W.K. Firk).
Watch the video screencast above or follow the written tutorial instructions below for more detail on how to make a table of contents in Word.
Creating Your Table of Contents in Word
There are a few ways of creating a table of contents in Word, but only two that you’ll ever use
Create them automatically from built-in styles
Create them from your custom styles
These methods work mostly the same in Windows and Mac versions of Microsoft Word.
Using MS Word built-in styles is the fastest and most common technique, and using custom styles takes only a little more work. Sometimes, you’ll want to use both techniques in the same document. Once you have a table of contents (TOC) in a document, you can format it with its own styles. You don’t want to format the TOC like regular text, because the formatting can easily get wiped out.
How the Textbook is Organized
Before doing anything to the document, let’s see how it’s organized. Page 1 is the title, page 2 is blank and will hold the table of contents, page 3 is the preface, and after that comes the text. As you scroll down, notice that headings and subheadings are formatted.
The textbook as level 1, 2 and 3 headings.
The best way to see the structure of the document is with the Navigation Pane. (In some versions of Word for Mac, it may be called the Document Map Pane.)
In Windows, go to the View tab, then click the check box to enable the Navigation Pane.
The Word Navigation Pane is a great way of looking through a document.
On the Mac, click the Sidebar option to show the drop-down menu. Click the arrow next to the option and click Navigation. (On older versions of the Mac software, the option is called Document Map Pane.)
On the Mac, use Sidebar > Navigation to navigate through a document.
On your Mac or PC, go back to the Home tab if you’re not already there. Keep your eye on the Styles box on the ribbon, and click the items in the pane to navigate through the book.
Notice that the items with whole numbers – like 2. Understanding the Physical Universe – are formatted as Heading 1, and items with decimals – like 2.1 Reality and Pure Thought – are formatted as Heading 2. There are also a few decimal items – like 4.5 Space Travel – that are formatted as Heading 3.
Tip: when creating a document, the shortcuts for applying the Heading 1, 2 and 3 styles are Ctrl-Alt-1, Ctrl-Alt-2, and Ctrl-Alt-3 (and Command-Opt-1, Command-Opt -2, and Command-Opt-3 on the Mac).
Generating a Table of Contents Using Built-In Header Styles in Word
Word can now turn those Heading styles into table of contents entries. Click at the top of page 2. (Tip: in Windows, press Ctrl-G, type 2, then press Enter. On the Mac, press Command-Opt-G, type 2, then press Return.)
In Windows, go to the References tab on the ribbon, click the Table of Contents button on the left, then choose one of the two built-in tables from the list. Note that the thumbnails show that Headings 1, 2 and 3 will be included.
It’s almost the same on the Mac. Go to the Insert menu, choose Index and Tables, then pick one of the formats on the left and click OK. This dialog box also shows that Headings 1-3 will be included.
You can insert a table of contents in Word just by clicking one of the samples. (Example shown is on Windows.)
As soon as you choose one, the table of contents gets inserted starting on page 2, and Word automatically inserts a couple of more pages, so it all fits. In Windows, you can Ctrl-click one of the items, and it will hyperlink to the item in the document.
A table of contents is a field that you can update in MS Word. In Windows, fields have a gray background.
This works great, but there’s one problem. Before the Introduction, there is a Preface that should be included in the table of contents. And just before Appendix A1 is the heading for the Appendix, and that should also be included. But they weren’t, because they’re both formatted with a custom style called Large heading, and custom styles don’t get included in the default table of contents. The second method of creating table of contents in Word will fix that.
Creating a Table of Contents From Custom Styles in Word
Word can include any styles in a table of contents. We just have to tell it which ones to choose. And we can update the table, rather than having to delete it and start over.
In Windows, go back to the References tab, click the Table of Contents button, then near the bottom of the menu, choose Custom Table of Contents. Click the Options button near the bottom of the dialog box to display the Table of Contents Options dialog box.
On the Mac, go to back to the Insert menu and choose Index and Tables. In the Table of Contents section, click the Options button.
On the Mac or PC the Table of Contents Options dialog box shows that the Heading 1 style will have TOC level 1, the Heading 2 style will have TOC level 2, and the Heading 3 style will have TOC level 3.
Word uses its built-in styles to determine what goes into the table of contents. (Windows example)
Scroll down to the bottom of the list (on the Mac, you'll use the down slider). Then, in the box for Large heading, type a 1 to make it level 1. Table of Content levels can come from more than one style.
To include a custom style in the table of contents, assign a heading level to it.
Click OK in the Table of Contents Options dialog, then OK again in the Table of Contents dialog box. When Word displays a message asking if you want to replace the table, choose Yes. The Preface and Appendix are now both included in the table of contents.
After adding custom styles to the TOC list, text formatted with those styles will appear in the table.
Manually Updating the Table of Contents in Word
There are other times when you’ll want to update the table manually. This is handy when you change the text of one of the headings and want the change reflected in the table of contents.
Scroll down to the page with the preface. At the top of the page replace PREFACE with FORWARD. Make sure it still uses the Large heading style.
Go back to the top of the table of contents and click in it. Note that it has a gray background; that means it’s a field, and fields can usually be updated.
Click the Update Table button either on the TOC itself (that button doesn't always appear) or on the References tab, and the first entry changes to FORWARD. (On the Mac, right-click the table and choose Update Field from the pop-up menu. Choose the Update entire table option and click OK.)
Update the table of contents with either of the Update Table buttons or by right-clicking on the table and selecting Update field. (Windows example shown here.)
Now that the table of contents displays the correct text, we can apply nicer formatting though.
How to Modify Table of Contents Styles in Word
Each heading level of the table of contents has its own style that’s automatically applied. All we have to do is change the formatting of the styles to change the table’s appearance, here's how:
In Windows, in the References tab of the ribbon, click again on the Table of Contents button and choose Custom Table of Contents, near the bottom. In the Table of Contents dialog box, click Modify.
On the Mac, click Insert > Index and Tables. On the left side, choose From Template, then click Modify. Everything else works the same way as in Windows.
In the Table of Contents dialog box, click Modify, and another dialog box appears, showing style names and formatting for the TOC heading levels. Select TOC 1.
Click the Modify button just below it, and the Style dialog box appears. (On the Mac, it's called the Properties dialog box.)
Use the Style dialog box in Word to choose the heading levels you want to format.
Format the style with Arial or Helvetica, 12 points, bold. Then click OK.
Modify the style of a TOC item is the same as modifying the style of any other text in Word.
Repeat for the TOC 2 style, and set it to Arial or Helvetica, 12 points, normal.
The table of contents should now look like this:
After editing the table of contents styles and updating the table, you'll see the new formatting.
When you have a long document, you don’t have to fear creating a table of contents. Whether you’re using Windows or a Mac, you can insert one in just a few clicks, then use the same dialog box to change the formatting.
As you learned in this table of contents tutorial, remember not to apply formatting directly to the table, because it can get wiped out if you replace it. If you make any changes to the Word document itself, remember to click the top of the TOC and update it. Leave a comment below if you have any trouble making or tweaking your table of contents.
To learn more about working with Microsoft Word, study the following tutorials:
How to Convert & Edit PDF Documents in Microsoft Word
Matthew Guay
How to Make Microsoft Word Text Effects and Typography Art
Vaclav Krejci
How to Simplify Word Document Formatting With Styles
Bob Flisser
Editorial Note: This post was originally published in 2014. It has been comprehensively revised to make it current, accurate, and up to date by our staff—with special assistance from Laura Spencer.
Bob Flisser has authored many videos and books about Microsoft and Adobe products, and has been a computer trainer since the 1980s. He is also a web and multimedia developer. Bob is a graduate of The George Washington University with a degree in financial economics.
BobFlisser
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Daily Universe
The Daily Universe, previously known as the Brigham Young Universe, is a student journalism lab and newspaper at Brigham Young University. The paper changed names in 1956. Editors of the paper include: Ralph Barney (1956-1957), Mark Murphy (1957-1958), Hartt Wixom (1958-1959), Larry Day (1959-1960), Don Woodward (1960-1961), Millard Wilde (1961-1962), A. Ronald Peterson (1962-1963), Janet Hofheins (1963), Bruce L. Olsen (1963-1964), Meryl Lynn Forsberg (1964), Bill Sanders (1964-1965), Sheila Carter (1965), Linda Hansing (1965), Budge Wallis (1965-1966), Dennis Berrett (1966-1967), Jaron Summers (1967), Dona Gregory (1967), Steve Berry (1967), Jaron Summers (1967-1968), Glen L. Williardson (1968-1969), Susan Tanner (1969), Pierre Hathaway (1969-1970), Roger Gillespie (1970), Dave Mitchell (1970-1971), Paul Toscano (1971-1972), Roger Alyworth (1972-1973), Dave Van Atta (1973), Mary K. Stout (1973), Cecelia A. Harris (1973), Rolf Koecher (1973-1974), Teri Hillyard (1974), Vernon Anderson (1974-1975), Mike Hansen (1975), Paul Roberts (1975), Marc Haddock (1975-1976), Al R. Young (1976), Richard M. Romney (1977), Gary Page (1977), Yvonne Johnson (1978), Daryl R. Gibson (1978), Sybel Alger (1978), Daryl R. Gibson (1978), Janetha Hancock (1979), Lon A. Wilcox (1979), David Long (1979), Larry Werner (1980), Ken Bush (1980-1981), Chuck Golding (1981), Lee Davidson (1981), Michele Dill (1982), Gaylen Webb (1982), Carrie Moore (1982), Jay Evensen (1983), Carri Phippen (1983), Stewart Shelline (1983-1984), Holly Armstrong (1984), Scott D. Pierce (1985), Craig Steinburg (1985), Mary Alice Campbell (1985-1986), Tom Christensen (1986), Joel Campbell (1986), Steve Hawkins (1987), Mike Montrose (1987), L.D. Weller (1987), Brian T. West (1988), Ann B. South (1988), Camille Goodrich (1988), Lane Williams (1989), Tom Norman (1989), Pamela L. Olsen (1989), LeeAnn Lambert (1990), Fred Lowry (1990), Eliza Tanner (1990), Mark Reed (1991), Scott Niendorf (1991), Trenton Ricks (1991-1992), Geoffrey M. Thatcher (1992), David Farnworth (1992), Tad Walch (1993), Brian Kagel (1993), Sarah Jane Cannon (1994), James Ahlstrom (1994), Matt Franck (1994), Susanne Wendt (1995), Stephen J. Parker (1995), Kevin Schlag(1995), Jeaneatte Bennett (1996), Teonei Salway (1996), Janna Nielsen (1996), Craig Craze (1997), Amy Cragun (1997), Jerry Gowen (1997-1998), Shawn Dickerson (1998), Cameron Fuller (1998), Kristen Sonne (1999), Phil Stahle (1999), Sarah Monson (1999), Jesse Hyde (2000), Pete Thunell (2000), Trish Barker (2000), Kris Boyle (2001), Seth Blaylock (2001), Jeff Oliver (2001), Stephanie Beck (2002), Sally Atkinson (2002), Travis Morgan (2002), Andrea Ludlow (2003), Leigh Dethman (2003), David Randall (2003), Kira Cluff (2004), Anne Ireland Burt (2004), Amelia Nielson-Stowell (2004-2005), Autumn Lorimer (2005), Heather Bowser (2005), Jordan Burke (2005), James Greaves (2006), Nathan Moulton (2006), David Rasmussen (2007), Janice Sorensen (2007-2008), Alicia Coffman (2007-2008), Joshua Flake (2008-2009), Michael Edwards (2009), McKay Coppins (2009-2010), and Ed Carter (2010-).
1 Variant Names
3 Functions
4 Assets and Administrative Structure
5 Associated Units
6 Associated Archival Materials
8 Maintenance Information
Variant Names
The Daily Universe
Brigham Young University. Daily Universe
Location: Provo, Utah (1956- )
The Daily Universe was the campus-lab for journalism students. The Daily Universe mainly existed to train journalism and public relations students in writing for mass media. The lab produces a newspaper.
Assets and Administrative Structure
The Daily Universe was overseen by an editor as well as a business manager. Beginning in 1972, the Universe was under the supervision of the Dept. of Communications within the College of Fine Arts and Communications. It was also under the supervision of a Daily Universe Advisory Board.
Superior unit: Brigham Young University (1956-1972)
Superior unit: Brigham Young University. Dept. of Communications (1972- )
Earlier unit: Brigham Young Universe (1956)
Associated unit: Brigham Young University. Public Communications (1978-1997)
Associated unit: Brigham Young University. University Communications (1997- )
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Associated unit: Brigham Young University. News Bureau (1956-1978)
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Students Ordered to Spray Paint Over Name of Christ on Football Field
Two Benton High School students were ordered to remove a logo from the football field end zones because it included Christian references.
The order came just hours before the Louisiana high school football team ran onto the field.
“You have to stand up for Christ no matter what (and we) just told the coaches we wouldn’t do it,” one of the students wrote on social media. “We ended up leaving the field and not helping them cover up the Scripture that was put on the field.”
The logo belonged to Christ Fit Gym, a faith-based gymnasium in nearby Bossier City, Louisiana. It included the words “Christ Fit Gym,” a cross and a Bible verse reference, 1 Timothy 4:8.
Owner Billy Weatherall tells me he paid the high school football booster club $3,500 to put his logo in the end zone for the 2018-19 football season.
“We have a signed contract,” he told the Todd Starnes Radio Show.
“I got a phone call from a school official Friday morning while I was having my quiet time and drinking coffee,” Weatherall said. “He said they were instructed to paint over the cross and he was devastated about it.”
After he hung up the telephone and talked to his wife, Weatherall knew that he was going to have to take a stand.
“This is something I believe in,” he said. “This is what my faith is all about. This is something I cannot and will not compromise on.”
A judge granted a temporary restraining order to prevent anyone from removing the signs — but it was too late.
Republican State Sen. Ryan Gatti, who is representing Christ Fit Gym, said he did not think he would see the day in Louisiana when teenagers would be asked to violate their conscience.
“We’re at the point now where kids are being asked to spray paint over signs with the name of Christ,” he told me. “Just let that sink in.”
The Bossier Parish School Board’s legal counsel advised the high school’s administration that the logo should be removed, pending consultation with the court.
“The logo of the business included a Cross and Bible verse and was painted on the football field yesterday,” the statement read. “A challenge to the logo was received from counsel for the plaintiffs in a pending federal lawsuit alleging improper endorsement of religion in the schools.”
Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a federal lawsuit against the school district in February, alleging the district was promoting Christianity and proselytizing students.
Bossier Press reports the lawsuit alleges “widespread use of prayer on school property, during school events, in classrooms at all levels, at sporting events at graduation ceremonies, during awards assemblies, and at student government meetings.”
It’s not exactly clear what kind of godless heathen complained about the gymnasium’s logo — but I’m not sure they have a legal leg to stand on. But it doesn’t matter because they picked a fight with the wrong Christian.
Weatherall tells the Todd Starnes Radio Show that he plans on fighting the good fight to have his logo restored.
“What would Jesus do? Jesus would not say this is okay. Jesus would not allow His name to be stamped out,” he told me. “I want to fight this fight.”
There are some mighty good people in Bossier City — and among them are Billy Weatherall and those two brave young teenage boys who stood up to those school officials.
“No matter what people say, you have to stand up for Christ even if it could get you in trouble with the school, or anyone else,” the young man wrote.
Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary. His latest book is “The Deplorables’ Guide to Making America Great Again.” Follow him on Twitter @ToddStarnes and find him on Facebook.
This article was vetted by our C-VINE team of volunteer investigative, citizen journalists who make certain all information is researched for accuracy before publishing. C-VINE News is run by, “We the People”.
Bible verseChristChrist Fit Gymfootball fieldFreedom of Religionfreedom of speechLousianateenage boys stood by beliefs
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Breaking News › Forums › Students Ordered to Spray Paint Over Name of Christ on Football Field
This topic has 0 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 2 years, 4 months ago by General Admin.
September 1, 2018 at 5:15 am #53863
General Admin
Two Benton High School students were ordered to remove a logo from the football field end zones because it included Christian references. The order ca
[See the full post at: Students Ordered to Spray Paint Over Name of Christ on Football Field]
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Jilted lover arrested for Paso Robles man’s murder
Maria Granados
By DANIEL BLACKBURN
An angry, spurned woman may be tied to the murder of a Paso Robles man earlier this year.
Paso Robles Police have named five people believed to have been involved in robbing and assaulting Victor Hugo Sanchez, who later was shot to death as he stood in the driveway of his apartment building.
Investigators were probing the fall 2012 robbery incident when the victim, Victor Hugo Sanchez, was murdered Feb. 23, riddled by multiple bullet wounds.
CalCoastNews reported last week that police were looking into possible links between the two crimes, and that evidence suggested Sanchez may have been killed to silence his testimony in future legal proceedings regarding the robbery.
According to earlier reports and new information from police, these are the events that may have led to Sanchez’s murder.
Sanchez met a woman in October at a downtown Paso Robles bar, the Crooked Kilt (now called Pappy McGregor’s Pub and Grill). After several cocktails, they left the saloon and drove to Templeton, stopping on a darkened road. Another car pulled up behind Sanchez’s vehicle, and two men attacked him with a crowbar, stealing his wallet and car keys.
Nearby residents heard the commotion, and the assailants, along with the young woman, fled.
Sanchez was hospitalized with broken bones and facial injuries.
As the investigation into the robbery and assault proceeded, police zeroed in on the individuals thought to be involved, and were paying particular attention to 49-year-old Maria del Carmen Granados Fajardo, Sanchez’a former live-in girlfriend.
According to Paso Robles detectives, the robbery and assault were planned, orchestrated and financed by Granados after “an acrimonious breakup with Sanchez.”
Joseph Villarreal and Crystal Garner
The young woman Sanchez met in the bar is identified as Crystal Lynn Garner of Stockton, 21. She and her boyfriend, Joseph Villarreal Jr., also of Stockton, are murder suspects, as is Garner’s sister, Christine, 24, and Christine’s husband, David Rodriguez Hernandez, 37, both of Ceres. The latter two fled to Mexico after Sanchez’s murder, and the older sister was extradited to Paso Robles on April 18.
Hernandez remains on the loose in Mexico but is being sought by Mexican authorities.
Granados was in Fayetteville, Georgia, when she was taken into custody. She awaits a trip back to California.
Authorities said they continue to investigate possible connections between Sanchez’s murder, and the earlier robbery and assault.
Subjects: Georgia Guns Murders Paso Robles Paso Robles Police Department
Candidates for SLO council state positions in forum
Monning promoting California sweetened drink tax
slowtime
Hang ‘Em High!
Zuma7
They don’t seem to be like those beautiful and smart people at Cal-Poly.
Nope…..far from it.
HarryMalone
So only 2 are in custody and charged with what? Did they make bail? Very vague reporting.
REALLY??? This is about as bad as the spelling and grammer nazies complaining. Did you EVER think, that maybe, JUST MAYBE, that, that is ALL the information the police realised at this time and is beyond the reporters control???
See. In my fast typing earlier should have been released.
Maria or Carmen is being held in Georgia and will be extradited. Christine, a US citizen, was returned from Mexico, two people are in custody, and Hernandez is a Mexican citizen loose in Mexico and hopefully will be extradited.
The new Mexican President, Pena, may or may not be as cooperative in extraditing Mexican citizens for crimes as was Calderon, the former President .
Maria (or Carmen) is being held in Georgia and will be extradited. Christine, a US citizen, was returned from Mexico, two people are in custody, and Hernandez is a Mexican citizen loose in Mexico and hopefully will be extradited.
The new Mexican President, Pena, may or may not be as cooperative in extraditing Mexican citizens for crimes in the US as was Calderon, the former President .
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Examination of Potentially Ectoparasite-driven Behavior in Burrowing Owls: Tests of Alternative Hypotheses
Abstract: Burrowing Owls (Athene cunicularia) and their nests harbor at least 39 species of arthropods from 21 different families. Among the ectoparasites on Burrowing Owls are fleas, which are primarily Pulex irritans (Family Pulicidae), the human flea. Fleas can number in the hundreds on individual Burrowing Owls. Thus, we hypothesized that flea infestation has shaped Burrowing Owl behavior to avoid the costs of ectoparasitism. As part of experiments using infrared trail cameras deployed at Burrowing Owl nests in southern Idaho ¬¬during 2012-2013, we noticed apparent sunning behavior in both adult and nestling Burrowing Owls. Camera images captured owls lying on the ground with wings outstretched and flat. We only observed this behavior during daylight hours, although cameras were active for 24 h/day. Sunbathing in birds is often associated with ectoparasite reduction, although sunning has not previously been examined in relation to flea infestation. During 2014 we conducted an experiment that included fumigating some nests with a flea removing insecticide and examined the prediction that sunbathing would occur more frequently in control nests where ectoparasites remained. As sunning was not during the coolest parts of the day, it did not appear to function for warming. Also, we ultimately found no difference in the frequency of sunning in fumigated and control nests, and there was no relationship between sunning and abundance of fleas on owls. Thus, the evidence is not consistent with the ectoparasite hypothesis, as owls sunned irrespective of flea load. We also evaluated the alternative hypotheses that sunning was related to thermoregulation, anting, drying or feather degrading bacteria. The first three we were able to reject, and the last will need future research.
Authors: Skyler Wysocki
The Effects of Varying Wavelengths of Light on Diatom Movement
Abstract: Diatoms were studied in order to determine in which wavelength of light they would be most active. It was surmised this knowledge would allow easier testing of future diatom movement hypotheses. This knowledge could, in turn, allow control over diatom movement in order to prevent or circumvent hazardous diatom blooms. Specimens were studied using a Parco scientific microscope in a dark room. They were studied both with and without cover slips to ensure the cover slips did not hinder movement. Sheets of high quality color transparency paper were laid over the microscope light, producing a single, strong color. In the end, the diatoms didn’t move at all, no matter the circumstances. The diatoms could have had no reason for movement or have been restricted by the small amount of water on the microscope slide due to the vast difference between the slide and the diatoms’ natural environment.
File Attachments: Diatoms.docx
Authors: Eric Swiecki
White-tailed Deer Browse Preference: A Comparative Study of the Catskill and Adirondack Mountain Regions, New York State
Abstract: Abundant white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in New York State, United States, affect forest regeneration and stand composition through feeding (browse) pressure. White-tailed deer browse preference of six different hardwood tree species in two mountain ranges, the Catskill and Adirondack Mountains, within New York State were compared in order to determine the extent of browse selection by deer. There were no statistically different browse selection by white-tailed deer within the Catskills or Adirondack study area or between each study site. Visual analysis of the study areas after concluding the study revealed that red maple (Acer rubrum) was the preferred browse species at each study site.
Major: Biology, Natural Resources Management and Policy
File Attachments: Title, abstract, TOC , Report
Authors: John MacNaught, Blaine Kenyon, Mark Staats, Travis Boucher, Noah Finlayson-Gesten
Would an underpass/tunnel on Keese Mills Road decrease the percentage of amphibian mortality due to road mortality?
Abstract: Road Mortality has had a huge impact on Amphibian populations worldwide. Several options are available to help maintain and preserve migrating populations across roadways. One method that is looked at during this study is underpass and fencing. In this study, I assessed the need for an underpass and if it could help reduce the amount of amphibian’s mortality by traffic and, if an underpass is necessary, properly predict a location. I also looked at if underpasses alone could reduce the mortality of amphibians. I constructed arrays and pitfall traps to simulate an underpass on Keese Mills Road at Paul Smiths and Santa Clara, Franklin County New York. I predicted that underpass would decrease the amount of amphibian being slayed. I also predicted that certain locations would have more usage then others. The results showed that there was no significant difference between the location of the sites and whether they would be used by the amphibians. The results also showed that there was no correlation between the species that were captured and the species that were killed.
Authors: Jorge Velazquez
Management Plan for Reintroduction of elk (Cervus canadensis) to the Adirondack Park, New York
Abstract: Elk were extirpated from their historic eastern range, which entailed most states and parts of Canada east of the Mississippi River, by the late 1800’s. In the western United States elk (Cervus canadensis) are experiencing encroachment and habitat loss due to current land management practices. Overgrazing by cattle and encroachment through development and natural gas drilling are the main causes of habitat loss for elk. Many eastern states such as Tennessee, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have reintroduced elk herds to protected areas of their respective states to ensure that these anthropogenic causes of habitat loss will not affect the elk. The Adirondacks of New York offer a large expanse of land where elk could thrive in their historic range. The proposed plan would be to reintroduce 100 elk to the western region of the Adirondack Park in parts of Franklin and St. Lawrence Counties. Before the individuals would be reintroduced, forest management through the use of clear-cutting and patch burning would be implemented to promote the suitable amount of foraging habitat. To assess the population growth of the elk, individuals will be fitted with VHF radio collars to be able to conduct aerial surveys. To assess habitat alteration, vegetation surveys will be conducted to determine the amount of understory vegetation occurring in each cut and burnt patch. This management plan will be successful when the elk population has grown to a level at which they can be hunted sustainably. Hunting will be monitored by New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. This management effort would successfully reintroduce a once native species to its historic range providing ecological stability, as well as economic and social benefits.
File Attachments: Final Draft.docx
Authors: Kyle Nellis
(-) Biology (4)
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Discover Unpacking Israeli History Herzl and the non-Promised Land
Herzl and the non-Promised Land
After over 70 years of existence, It’s impossible to imagine the Jewish State being located anywhere other than Israel. But in the early days of Zionism, there was a push to establish a homeland in a non-Promised Land in East Africa. This week, Noam Weissman gets to the heart of the Uganda Plan and discusses why the movement’s leaders felt they needed to come up with a solution — any solution — to combat the rampant antisemitism of the day.
The Unpacking Israeli History Podcast series is sponsored by Andrea & Larry Gill
Learn more about Unpacked: https://unpacked.media/
Visit Unpacked on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/unpacked
Teaching about this topic? Check out our relevant educator resources here: https://unpacked.education/video/herzl-the-zionist-dream-of-a-jewish-state/
Unpacked is a division of OpenDor Media
Gush Katif: When Jews expelled Jews
The Second Intifada: trauma and tragedy
The assassination of Yitzchak Rabin
Baruch Goldstein: Legacy of a massacre
The First Intifada: A grassroots movement
The Yom Kippur War: A National Catastrophe
Munich Olympics: When terrorism won
Eichmann: the controversy of justice
Hatikvah: The story behind the anthem
The Altalena: Israel’s (almost) civil war
Deir Yassin: The battle for truth
Hebrew: A dead language revived
The Balfour Declaration: 67 words that changed the world
Dreyfus: An Affair to Remember
Introducing Unpacking Israeli History
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August 15, 2012 Bruce Allen Morning Links
Local Media Burned Again on Red Sox Story
By now, you’ve all likely read the story on Yahoo! Sports by Jeff Passan about the July meeting that Red Sox players held with management to express their unhappiness with manager Bobby Valentine.
So again, just like with Buster Olney’s story, and Passan’s earlier stuff, how does a national guy get this story ahead of all the local guys who are in there every day?
And how are stories like these ones, which ran yesterday, still being written – Ownership’s fault? Not buying it and Sox demise not what you think ?
I’m aghast. Everyone on that team, from top to bottom, but especially at the the top, is to blame for this disaster. This team has me openly pining for the glory days of John Harrington, Dan Duquette, Joe Kerrigan, Mike Lansing, Dante Bichette and Carl Everett.
The Nick Cafardo column above on ownership is truly mind-blowing, (at one point, Nick turns the finger at the fans, saying we’re too spoiled around here) as is Gerry Callahan’s continued defense of Larry Lucchino.
Meanwhile, my Twitter feed last night during the game was more about the setlist at the Springsteen concert.
At least there’s some hope today in these pieces:
Red Sox ownership lacking courage – Minihane, WEEI.com
Bobby Valentine continues to talk himself into trouble – Tomase, Herald.
It’s time to fire Bobby Valentine – Gasper, Globe (making his debut as full-time columnist.)
And then there is Joe Haggerty, making friends and influencing people:
Asked Bobby V 2 questions about Yahoo "national story" Sox star players called for his firing. Rest of hard-hitting Sox media: 0 questions
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) August 14, 2012
After all this Red Sox combustion, I fully expect Joe Sullivan to commission a full investigative piece into the Patriots rookie hazing practice. Send Hohler to Foxborough!
Sticking with the NFL for a second, does anyone find the Jets secrecy about their “Wildcat” formation to be hilarious? Media is forbidden to report on it, and they’ve booted fans from practice.
The Patriots do similar things and Sullivan is filing complaints to the league office. Meanwhile the Jets continue to be praised as an open team with nothing to hide. Got it.
Get all your Patriots news today at Patriotslinks.com.
57 thoughts on “Local Media Burned Again on Red Sox Story”
not st nick says:
Andy Gresh actually tried to defend Nick Carfardo, whose feet haven’t touched the ground in years when writing on the Red Sox. Nick wears a Red Sox beanie complete with propeller when not on camera and in my opinion, probably carries Ortiz’s travel bag when off duty.
Andy, you lost a great deal of credibility with the Nick Carfardo support today. he’s a major part of the problem, not the solution.
Winning_Again says:
Andy Gresh had credibility???? Did you mean Incredi-belly?
Has Joe Haggerty gotten to the bottom of why Tyler Seguin missed a morning breakfast in Winnipeg last year? Or did he just accept the team/players explanation that due to the time zone change, Tyler’s alarm on his smartphone malfunctioned? Is Joe’s twitter avatar still a photo of him looking adoringly at Seguin?
So if Haggerty was not on the Bruins beat, and did not appear to be a Bruins fanboy, then his truthful observations would be given more credibility? Look I am not his biggest fan either…however he is actually reporting things the guys I do respect (McAdam, Abraham) are deliberately not.
Merely pointing out that he’s as guilty as the baseball writers he’s pointing his finger at.
I don’t disagree that his hockey coverage is questionable but that does not disqualify the observations he is making about the Sox. The problem I have with people who want to shoot the messenger over this sox story is that they are missing the details of the story. Let’s not worry about Haggs hockey credentials right now… when he screws up a Bruins story let’s jump ugly on him. Right now he is out front of a Sox story no one else wants to cover…well not locally anyway.
The only fact he uncovered was that Lackey was double fisted after the game, unless you’re also uncluding that beer was in the clubhouse at all, to which he said himself he already knew after heswad embarrassed that he reported something that everybody else knew.
He reported that beer was in the clubhouse which was not known by the general public. We were then told by the state supported media that the policy all year was beer in the away clubhouse was fine. That was not how I understood Bobby V’s proclamation earlier this year. It seems to me the players do not take winning seriously. Management does not know how to foster an attitude change. If you want to ignore the story go ahead. I think it is another piece that explains the puzzle that is these Boston Red Sox.
But Haggerty himself said he knew beer was allowed on the road AFTER he flipped out about it and was embarrassed by the fact that he didn’t know. There is no question the Red Sox were coy about it, but that isn’t really the issue. The issue is that Haggerty just showed up in the Red Sox clubhouse a week ago, reported nothing but gossip, and then called out by name the people who are lacking journalistic integrity for not reporting gossip. Do you think Haggerty ever saw an underage Seguin having a beer in the Bruins locker room having a beer? Do you think he would ever report that? Or do you think he would instead opt to do a follow up piece on how beautiful Seguin’s condo is?
Haggerty is not the story in my mind…to make him the story misses the point. If after this is over you want to argue about how much of a tool Haggerty is I will be happy to sit on the sidelines and watch people pile on. The issue is the dichotomy of what the Sox ownership/management says and what they actually do.
Out front on what? He saw a guy with two beers in his hand? Period. He broke nothing Passan broke the story. Also, Haggs had a big stink with Minihane and accused Minihane of NOT BEING IN THE BRUINS LOCKER ROOM all year. He can’t have it both ways.
It’s more about him criticizing the writers on the beat for exactly what he does on the Bruins beat. But yeah, reporting that a guy on the 60 day DL who nobody likes to begin with was pounding beers after a loss is the work of Gayle Faye. This is nothing but a look atme phase from Haggerty. Go tell him on Twitter that you disagree with him and watch how fast he blocks you.
I am not arguing Haggs isn’t a tool. I am only saying that what he saw deserves to be reported and the fact that the beat guys are circling the wagons instead of trying to get to the bottom of why this team is not focused on winning is what is infuriating.
Snuffy Smith says:
Sox news is BURIED on pg 5 of today’s Projo. Sports editor there got it right. No one cares about this organization with their collective heads up their butts, from top to bottom.
Also, Buster Olney reported this in his writing and on Twitter last night:
Sure enough, less than a week later, Joel Sherman of the New York Post became the first to make reference to the players’ discussion with their bosses: “Outside officials say
the clubhouse dislike for Bobby Valentine is so intense, players
lobbying ownership for a change is not an overstatement.”
More details are out now,
reinforcing for all to see the reality that has been in place for
months: The Red Sox players don’t want to play for Bobby Valentine, not
in the way that the Chicago White Sox want to play for Robin Ventura or the Los Angeles Dodgers want to play for Don Mattingly.
From: http://es.pn/Ocwdeg
(Sherman’s link is http://nyp.st/OcwDSa )
He’s right after reading Sherman’s post. Now, I guess Sherman is a “local beat guy” but also does some national stuff. How did a guy from New York get this (start the Bobby Valentine conspiracy theories here. I assume some folks might know the Post/Sherman/Valentine relationship and might fill in details)
Also, I heard Passan on this morning with Mike and Mike (it appears as if he was on D+C/T+R as well), he hints that there are many more details but he could not verify them, so he didn’t go to print with them, but hinted at a follow-up piece. Moreover, he said on all programs that he “sat” on the story for weeks verifying this. So, he didn’t just have some guy call him yesterday and hastily write a story that was rushed through editors to go hot. Again, why wasn’t any of this written about/asked about/discovered?
Unfortunately it’s the way sports journalism works these days. I’m not agreeing with it but I understand it. Guys who have team sources, player sources, don’t want to risk ripping the 1 guy that will give them insight, material, or a quote.
However, the blind loyalty that follows is disgusting. We only get these stories because the national guys don’t have to worry about these bridges being burned.
The players and local media with the idea that “he’s not in our locker room everyday” don’t realize how stupid they sound, so they continue to use this as a crutch defense.
I wonder who leaked the story to Passan, had to have been one of the 18 in the room.
Haggerty is a WWE character at this point.
I swear Joe is trying so super hard to show the higher-ups at TSH that he should replace Evil Tony as Felger’s sidekick since most fans have had enough of “You’re right Mike.”
Instead of deflecting and insulting hags why don’t you admit that he got it right.
DryHeave says:
Gerry Callahan’s continued defense of Larry Lucchino”…
No shocker here, has Callahan (and/or Dennis) ever said anything bad about one of their REGULAR interview guests?….Brady?..granted that’s a tough one but even after the RARE poor game from Brady they’ll throw him softballs and blame receivers/O-line/Belichick….Schilling? according to D&C he walks on water…Doc Rivers? “Oh, he’s so informative in OUR interview compared to boring Belichick/Big Show interview”….Brad Faxon?…if he wasn’t a regular guest they would be MOCKING him for not winning a tournament since the stone age……nope, continued defense of Larry Lucchino, doesn’t surprise me in the least.
So there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel. On D&C this morning during the Jerry Remy interview John Dennis mentioned that the latest NESN ratings for the Sox were a 5 share down from an 8. That is a 37.5% decline in ratings which is huge. If there is anything that ownership understands it is how ratings on NESN directly effect their bottom line.
Three other things from that interview and the Jeff Passan interview that came 30 minutes earlier.
1) I lost all respect for Remy today when he called out Haggs for “not knowing the club’s policy on alcohol” and then “blowing up some beer on the raod into a non story”. Remy was spewing the company line…I get it. What he does not get is that while this team is losing, fans do not want to hear a technicality defended. They want results, they want players taking the game seriously as this is not rec league softball with a keg standing in for second base. Perhaps Remdog should be following the lead of Haggs rather than blindly accepting the bull pucky spewed to him by his “source” Dustin Pedoria.
2) Passan said there are more incidents and incidences that will come out because no one in Boston can stay quiet. Yet the beat guys are mind numbingly quiet. The herald does not have an ownership stake in the Sox so maybe it is time to release the Kraken?
3) John metaperiel’s defense of Larry Lucchino this AM was pathetic pandering. I get it, the morning show guys all like Larry and as such they do not want to be critical…well if you can’t call a spade a spade then I suggest they get out of the way. Same with Callahan who has no problem drumming up all sorts of bile, invective and acrimony for Penn State football but god forbid he can critically look at the state Sr. management has put the Red Sox in. It is so frustrating.
Rick Mc says:
” What he does not get is that while this team is losing, fans do not want to hear a technicality defended.”
If a fan cares that a 33 year old man was drinking two beers after a game of baseball, they need to get a life. Remy was right because it isn’t a big deal. And don’t tell me it’s “perception.” That is the last defense of an emotionally immature shoe-peer.
Its not perception…it directly relates to the priorities of the organization. If ownership does not care how its players train, rehab, and take care of their bodies, because in the end winning is not important to them…then why should it be important to the fans who support the team. Remy was wrong, it is a huge deal. The organization is selling the notion that winning is tantamount that fans are important, yet its actions say differently. Trotting the mouthpiece of the organization out there to be indignant that people care about the lack of preparation or that maybe the athletes should be a little more aware of the message they are sending is exactly the wrong thing this organization should be doing right now. With the way they are hemorrhaging viewers and visits at the park, maybe they should be more appreciative of their fans and the way this is all presenting.
Taking a few minutes out of hours spent at the ballpark as an indictment of the team’s dedication is perception. Seeing a guy drinking beers is not indicative of his training, rehab, or preparation and is not cause for you to get your panties twisted. You don’t know what Lackey did the rest of the day. Show me the connection between his drinking and he lack of dedication to his rehab.
I know that whatever is going regarding training, preparation and rehab is not working. So if you want to believe that laughing at the fans while players continue to think a MLB clubhouse is the equivalent of a college frat house projects a winning mentality and work ethic…enjoy!
Read one book about ballplayers and you will find constant references to beer in clubhouses. Some of the greats, too, like Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford. Christ, the We Are Family Pirates smoked butts in the dugout and did blow like they were at Studio 54. You are so naive and silly. Having a beer at 10 PM after your workday is done has nothing to do with one’s work ethic or mentality.
Winning, I do think the Red Sox players have whined and bitched, but that does not mean that John Lackey’s beer is the cause or that it should be taken away.
You both are such whiny, idiotic ninnies who lap up every BS story the media and talk radio gives you. Before you go, just make the connection between John Lackey’s two beers and his supposed lack of dedication or the troubles with the Red Sox.
You’re right Rick. The RedSox players have shown so much class, dedication, and strong desire to succeed this year. Let’s throw them a kegger to celebrate all their success this year. WEEEEE, acid is fun!
Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
Neil O'Callaghan says:
1. You can’t get on guys like Remy or Gammons or anyone else that works for NESN. They have no choice but to spew the company talking points, since, ya know, they work for the TV station that owns the company.
I can and I did…but I also know he had no choice. Still I lost respect.
On Point #1, I loved how Remy/Don were like, “Well, we don’t know if this story is true.. and if we take it as true” .. they spent more time basically saying Passan was some hack writing on a blog (might want to check what sand box you sit in there, boys). To mitigate this, however, they are just broadcasters and its not like they’re normal hard news/analyst.
NESN, also, on the pre-game hour, seemed to avoid the story for as long as possible. I think it took almost 15 minutes into the program, which they spent honoring Pesky (look, lets just skip the BS here and call this an obvious “executive programming decision”). CSNNE? Led with the story and went right to Haggs who was in Baltimore.
I’d be interested to see more on the numbers. Felger, the other week, mentioned something about NESN games being “semi-down” but NESN daily was down like 40%. I assume the games are starting to get hit in the similar way.
As to sources, quite a few have suggested Cherrington. I’ve even wondered if Bobby V is the source. Isn’t Bobby V on The Big Show today and also doing 30 minutes with Michael Kay in NY? However, his go-to guy seems to be Karl Ravech, and I assume he’d continue to use him because if Buster/TimK started breaking news on ESPN about clubhouse stuff that only he would know, they would know immediately it was him.
2.) Thought the same myself. Where are the folks who don’t have anything at stake here? Is the threat of having the BBWAA membership torn up really that big of a deal?
TARNATION! Sports says:
Bruce, good stuff. My opinion is that Bobby’s style just won’t fly here in the US with the way sports are now run by the players. Here’s my take on the situation: http://www.tarnationsports.com/2552/mutiny-in-boston/
bettyd says:
Very good piece about Sox on Grantland.com. It covered a lot of reasons for the bad season this year and Bobby V’s management style. Take a look.
I think you mean this:
http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/34740/whos-really-to-blame-for-the-red-sox-apocalypse
By Jonah Keri?
APimpNamedDaveR says:
If only we had had some evidence of Larry Lucchino sticking his fat hands into a perfectly well-operating organization and screwing things up to the point of utter destruction….
[Looks at Baltimore Orioles]
I just spit iced tea out my nose I was laughing so hard. Good one Dave!
love all the glowing comments from many of Boston’s infamous sports hacks/clownboys as to Johnny Pesky’s “class and dignity” (which of course Pesky had) but I guess none of them took the lead from Pesky. Is anybody more UNdignified than guys like Felger, Shank Shaugnessy, Tony Mazz, John Tomase, Gerry Callahan, John Dennis, Ron Borges, Joe Haggerty etc..etc..etc. OH the irony!!
You know who is more undignified…the Boston Red Sox and the fan boys who want to blame the media instead of the team.
who’s talking Red Sox?..I’m talking about dignity and if you’ve ever seen these clownboys on television or read some of their stuff you would know they have NONE
Even ESPN’s OTL is doing their entire 30-minute show right now on ESPN about the Red Sox. Figured it’d be front and center with it leading Sports Center + M+M.
Andy Dursin says:
Can’t wait to hear guys like Rob Bradford and Alex Speier weigh in, especially after hearing the two of them argue — as they have all season — that the issues in the clubhouse are “overblown”, that “people would like this team if they were winning” and that “chemistry is overrated.” How many times do we have to hear Bradford continually show up every weekend and defend his buddies? The local Sox media beat is a JOKE, pure and simple. After reading as Bruce pointed out one more NATIONAL WRITER get to the bottom of something that nobody local dared to write (or knew about, whicheever), you wonder if some of these frauds haven’t been drinking the beer along with Lackey and friends.
Baghdad Bradford is the king of the fanboys. If he says anything true about these punks then Beckett is gonna cancel the fishing trip.
MESSAGE TO ALL THE FANBOYS…THE LOCAL MEDIA IS NOT TO BLAME FOR THE SOX TROUBLES….IN FACT THE BASEBALL GUYS IN THIS TOWN ARE IN THE BAG FOR THE SOX…PLEASE STOP DIRECTING YOUR ANGER AT GUYS LIKE HAGS AND ACCEPT THE FACT THAT THIS TEAM YOU MAKE EXCUSES FOR IS A BUNCH OF OVERPAID BABIES WITH NO CLASS AND PROFESSIONALISM AND STOP BLAMING THE HOCKEY GUY FOR EXPOSING YOUR TEAM FOR THE JOKE THAT IT IS.
This professionalism you speak of, does it include knowing all the facts before you post something and than going back and changing it after your mistake is exposed and not issuing a retraction?
Love the puuka shell necklace and the prom picture with SEGS.
TjM says:
I think your shift key is broken. Or your 7 year old got access to your account.
well, goes by the name “Dan”…I think it’s Shank, sounds like him
whitey b says:
Shaddup Felger, ya douche!
I don’t care what the players want…they can all go f themselves.
This is the most hateable team ever.
It’s interesting how some people’s hatred for the media has blinded them to the fact that their favorite binkies on the team are just a bunch of assholes.
Hey Haggs, I mean Dan, Take a quick look at the name of the website you’re on there angry guy. It’s called Boston Sports Media Watch. One of the main points of the site is to offer fans a place to criticize the media when they mess up. As they often love to do to the athletes that they cover. Perhaps you would be more comfortable on a site like SOSH or another site, because I think you’re kind of missing the point of this one.
It’s interesting how Felger uses The CHB as a cover to mock the fans. Douche bag.
On a sidebar, since it’s a story I’ve posted about, awfulannouncing had a big post about the Comcast/FSN stuff. If you watched Dan Patrick or any regional sports (not the local CSNNE stuff) on CSNNE, this affects you:
http://www.awfulannouncing.com/2012-articles/august/comcast-sports-nets-drop-fox-sports-net-programming.html
Linda Austin says:
….still waiting for Bruin beat writer Joe Haggerty to write a hard hitting piece on the issues within the Bruin locker room. Hey Joey let’s start with Tyler Haggy is my Bro Seguin’s “party” problem.
You must feel pretty silly now. The most salacious part of that story wasn’t even true, Bruce. Way to attack the local reporters for no good reason.
Yeah, I sure have egg on my face. Did anyone here even report the meeting to begin with? That would be no. And who says it isn’t true? The players? John Henry? Larry Lucchino? Right, they are all bastions of credibility. The point remains that no one locally had a clue about this meeting until a national guy broke the story.
The morning after:
@buster_espn Red Sox worried about leaks after players/ownership story, re: Globe. http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2012/08/15/red-sox-concerned-about-breach-confidentiality-their-team-meetings/GapPJYMGs6ShGuiTwNmpjN/story.html Might have thought about that before meeting.
It was interesting that F+M (Bob Beers was in for Mazz) spent a good time talking about issues germane to this board/forum/site with the media. If you missed it, a quick summary would follow the post and many of the responses here.
And, while this issue gets lost/tossed around/dismissed, I still think it’s very relevant on why things seem to be so scant here when it comes to response/effort:
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story/_/id/1134983/john-w-henry:-liverpool-still-rebuilding-after-hicks-and-gillett?cc=5901
“That was a tremendous challenge. You could say Liverpool is an even bigger challenge than the Red Sox. Looking back at the day we bought Liverpool, I was trying to make a point then about how much of a challenge it was going to be because of the issues we inherited.”
National guys get the story first because it’s Youkilis who is spilling the beans. That’s the same reason Bobby V wanted him out of the clubhouse. He’s the leak.
If he lived where I do, we’d have shut him up a long time ago.
Q&A with Michael Felger
Red Sox lose second straight to Orioles
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Christian Mbilli’s debut under EOTTM’s wing in Mexico
On Saturday December 12, three tigers will fight in Mexico. This event will mark Christian M’Billi’s debut (16-0-0, 15 KOs) as an official member of Eye of the Tiger Management’s team. To do this, the one nicknamed “Solid” will immediately be involved in a complex fight while he sets to face a tough opponent well known to the Quebec public, Rolando Paredes (16-11-2, 11 K.-O. ). The latter has already faced Erik Bazinyan (25-0-0, 19 KOs), in addition to having offered a true war to Nurzat Sabirov (11-0-0, 9 KOs) and Lexson Mathieu (9-0-0, 8 KOs) last December. It is live from Cuernavaca in Mexico that Mbilli will continue his meteoric rise despite the current conditions related to Covid-19.
“We are proud to have a boxer such as Mbilli on our team. We wanted to get him to box quickly with an experienced boxer so he could continue to move up the world rankings. We have enormous confidence in him and that is why we are glad to oppose him to Paredes in Mexico”, said EOTTM President Camille Estephan.
The slugger, Avery Martin-Duval (4-0-0, 3 KOs), is another tiger who will be heading to Mexico for this boxing event. Having had four spectacular fights in just six months at the start of his career, Martin-Duval is eager to finally re-enter the arena after almost a year of inactivity linked to the current pandemic. He will be opposed to Esteban Hernandez (2-2-0) at 130 pounds in a duel scheduled for four rounds. Hernandez is recognized as an aggressive and very determined boxer. However, he will have to fare against the technique and the iron clad will to win from Martin-Duval on December 12.
Angelo Leo vs. Stephen Fulton Jr virtual press conference quotes
Luis Santana (1-0-0, 1 KO.) will also take part in the second edition of the COMMANDO Series following a spectacular entry into the pro ranks a month earlier. The Montrealer will therefore be making his second visit in as many months to the Deportivo Cri-Cri amphitheater. On November 7, he had obtained his first victory in an explosive way, in just one minute, against Gabino Toala (1-1-1, 1 KO.) For his second fight within the professionals, Santana still wants to impress the gallery while he faces Jesus Hernandez Ramirez (0-0-1) in a duel scheduled for 4 rounds.
This adventure on foreign soil for Christian Mbilli, Avery Martin-duval and Luis Santana will be the second edition of the new series called COMMANDO which will be broadcast exclusively on Punching Grace on December 12 from 7:30 p.m. The goal is to provide boxing fans with never before seen proximity to the action. If they cannot attend in person, they will once again be able to benefit from the shots captured at all times by a cameraman to thus have the impression of being right by the pugilists.
“The first edition of COMMANDO was a great success and we want to continue to offer boxing fans the opportunity to follow our tigers so closely. At all times, the fans will be able to feel the emotions and the impact of the blows during the fights of our three powerful boxers”, underlines the general manager of EOTTM, Antonin Décarie.
Billy Joe Saunders focused on all-British showdown
DAZN Goes Live Today In 200 Countries And Territories With Packed Boxing Schedule
Boxing News » fight-news » Christian Mbilli’s debut under EOTTM’s wing in Mexico
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Salina CC Wins 2020 Kansas Cup
Salina Country Club claimed their fifth Kansas Cup title on Sunday after defeating Great Life-Salina by a 5 to 3 margin in the championship match at Manhattan Country Club.
Warm fall temperatures and extreme winds with gusts exceeding 40 mph greeted players and made for challenging conditions.
The overall match was back and forth early with each club claiming an alternate shot match point and a singles match point.
Randy Syring and Ben Hadden took the Pro-Am Four-Ball match point for Salina CC to give them a 3 to 2 lead with three matches left on the course.
Both teams took a Net Four-Ball match point to give Salina CC a 4 to 3 lead with only the Open/Senior Mixed Scratch Four-Ball match remaining.
In the final match with Salina CC maintaining a 1 up lead with two holes to play, Salina CC’s Coleman Houk, the men’s golf coach at Kansas Wesleyan University, stuffed his tee shot on the par 3 17th hole to a couple feet for a tap in birdie to take the match point and secure the overall match victory for Salina Country Club.
Thank you to the 16 member clubs that participated in the COVID-19 modified Kansas Cup competition in 2020 and we look forward to seeing everyone in the 2021 Kansas Cup!
Champions Crowned at 32nd Senior Four-Ball Championship
Posted on October 8, 2020 | Leave a Comment on Champions Crowned at 32nd Senior Four-Ball Championship
Two wonderful days of weather greeted the full field of teams for the playing of the 32nd Kansas Senior Four-Ball Championship at The Jayhawk Club in Lawrence on Wednesday and Thursday. Teams took advantage of ideal scoring conditions during the first multi-day championship played at the redesigned property that was formerly Alvamar Golf & Country Club.
In the Senior Division, defending champions Sid McKnight & Andy Emerson successfully defended their title following a final round 9-under par 62. McKnight/Emerson finished the 36-hole championship at 15-under par 127 total which was good for a five shot victory. 2018 Senior Four-Ball Champions Matt Murray & David Rismiller took second and team of Chris Hutchens & Dane Ogden took third.
In the Super Senior Division, veteran golfers Tom Bachelor and Don Kuehn bested the field by one shot after finishing at 11-under par 131 total which included a final round 5-under par 66. The win was the second of the year for Bachelor who teamed up to win the Senior Team Championship last month at Falcon Lakes Golf Club. The win gave Kuehn his fifth Senior Four-Ball Championship title with five different partners.
Thank you to the teams, Central Links Golf rules volunteers and the membership & staff at The Jayhawk Club.
We look forward to the 2021 Senior Four-Ball Championship at Topeka Country Club!
Staley Farms wins Women’s KC Cup
Posted on September 30, 2020 | Leave a Comment on Staley Farms wins Women’s KC Cup
A thrilling season of the Women’s KC Cup concluded today at Lakewood Oaks Country Club with Staley Farms Golf Club winning this year’s Cup.
Staley Farms defeated The Deuce with a final result of 2-1.
The first match, the Low Handicap match, was won by Staley Farms with a result of 2&1.
The second match, the Mid Handicap match, was won by The Deuce with a result of 2UP.
The third match, the High Handicap match, was won by Staley Farms with a result of 2&1.
This is Staley Farms 4th Women’s KC Cup victory in 5 years – quite an impressive feat!
Thank you to Lakewood Oaks Country Club for hosting the Championship matches today and thank you to all of the clubs who participated in this year’s Women’s KC Cup!
You can check out the results here: https://centrallinksgolf.org/competitions/womens-kc-cup/
Thayer, Emerson Win Senior Series Titles
Posted on September 22, 2020 | Leave a Comment on Thayer, Emerson Win Senior Series Titles
Senior Cup Teams
The 2020 Senior Series program wrapped up on Tuesday with two wonderful days of weather at Firekeeper Golf Course.
Garden City’s Sean Thayer – Senior Champion
Garden City’s Sean Thayer continued his stellar play this year with another victory in the Senior Division. Thayer posted a final round 4-under par 68 to finish at 5-under par 139 total. Wichita’s Tracy Chamberlin took second at 2-under par 142 total. John Bailey, Michael Rack, Sam Walker and David Oetken rounded out the top five.
The 2020 Ozark Senior Challenge cup team was named following the Senior Series Championship. The Ozark Senior Challenge is an annual Ryder Cup style team event against the Missouri Golf Association for players age 50 to 64. The 2020 competition will be held at Twin Hills Golf & Country Club in Joplin, MO on October 13-15. Click the link above to see the gross and net qualifiers and the captain picks.
In the Super Senior Division, Baldwin City’s John Emerson claimed his first tournament title. Emerson’s final round 3-under par 69 elevated him to the top after finishing at 1-under par 143 total. Basehor’s Sam VanLandingham finished two shots back. Doug Kaup, Joe Rothwell and Tom Nielsen all tied for third place.
Baldwin City’s John Emerson – Super Senior Champion
The 2020 Association Senior Cup team was named for the Super Senior Division following the Senior Series Championship as well. The Association Senior Cup is an annual Ryder Cup style team event against the Missouri Golf Association for players age 65 & older. The 2020 competition will be held at Twin Hills Golf & Country Club in Joplin, MO on October 13-15. Click the link above to see the gross and net qualifiers and the captain picks.
Champions Crowned at Mid-Am Team/Sr Team Championships
Posted on September 9, 2020 | Leave a Comment on Champions Crowned at Mid-Am Team/Sr Team Championships
A full field of teams battled tough playing conditions on Tuesday and Wednesday at the 2020 Mid-Am Team & Senior Team Championships at Falcon Lakes Golf Club in Basehor. Warm summer conditions gave way to cold, overcast and damp conditions during opening day of the championship and persisted until the final putt was holed at the 54-hole event.
In the Mid-Am Team, Overland Park’s Park Ulrich and Leawood’s Doug Albers teamed up for the first time and put together a dominating performance of the rest of the field of teams. Ulrich and Albers finished at 18-under par which was good for a nine shot victory over the teams of Matt Kelley/Jordan Smith and Pete Krsnich/Tyler Chapman.
It was the third championship of the 2020 season for Ulrich who captured the 110th Kansas Amateur in July and the Heart of America Four-Ball last week with partner Davis Cooper. It was the second time that Albers has won the Mid-Am Team. He won the 2010 event with partner Jason Seeman.
In the Senior Team Championship, the Wichita duo of Tracy Chamberlin & Michael Holloway edged Brian Burris & Randy Vautravers by one shot. Chamberlin/Holloway finished at 10-under par 206 for the 54-hole championship.
In the Super Senior Division, past champions Tom Bachelor & Gary Roles partnered up for an eight shot win. Bachelor/Roles finished at 14-under par 202 total. Greg Goode & Don Kuehn finished in second at 6-under par 210.
Thank you to the membership and staff at Falcon Lakes Golf Club for hosting the rescheduled 2020 championship. We look forward to seeing everyone in Wichita in May 2021 for the Mid-Am Team & Senior Team Championship!
Ulrich and Cooper win HOA Four-Ball
Posted on September 3, 2020 | Leave a Comment on Ulrich and Cooper win HOA Four-Ball
A great two days of competition at Lawrence Country Club concluded today with the team of Park Ulrich and Davis Cooper winning the Heart of America Four-Ball Championship. Ulrich and Cooper defeated the team of Zach Sokolosky and Grant Herrenbruck in the final match by a result of 4&3. The final match was an intense one, highlighted by the exciting finish – on hole 14, a drivable par 4, Grant Herrenbruck made a birdie but was matched by Davis Cooper with a chip-in, which kept the side of Ulrich and Cooper 3UP at that point. On the 15th hole, which ended up being the final hole, Davis Cooper continued his momentum by holing a 20-footer for birdie to close out the match. After the round, Ulrich and Cooper was ecstatic to have won: “I’m so glad we won – I’ve wanted to win this event real bad, it’s one I haven’t won, so for Davis and I to come out on top was awesome”, Park Ulrich told us.
In Tuesday’s round of 16 and round of 8 matches, the team of Ulrich/Cooper defeated the team of Flanagan/Kagy by a result of 3&1, followed by a 3&2 victory over the team of S. Mason/Sapporito. The team of Herrenbruck/Sokolosky defeated the team of Hermeston/Wiltse by a result of 3&2, followed by another 3&2 victory over the team of Grove/Williams.
In the semifinal matches on Wednesday morning, the team of Ulrich/Cooper won their match by a result of 2&1 over the team of Clifford/Frederes in style, with Davis Cooper chipping in for a birdie on the 17th hole to close out the match. In the other semifinal match, the team of Herrenbruck/Sokolosky defeated the team of McHenry/Beckler by a result of 2&1 in a round that included 7 birdies and an eagle made by the winning squad of Herrenbruck/Sokolosky.
Thank you to Lawrence Country Club and all our volunteers for making this event possible! To view the final results, click here: https://www.golfgenius.com/pages/2343873
Hillier Wins High Plains Amateur
Posted on August 31, 2020 | Leave a Comment on Hillier Wins High Plains Amateur
University of Kansas golfer Harry Hillier took the 2020 High Plains Amateur Championship on Sunday at Buffalo Dunes Golf Course in Garden City. Hillier, a native of New Zealand, used a final round 6-under par 66 to best the field on his way to victory. Hillier finished the 36-hole championship at 7-under par 137 total.
2019 High Plains Amateur champion and Washburn University golfer Andrew Beckler of Topeka finished in the runner-up position. KU golfer Sion Audrain, Manhattan mid-am Brian Fehr and Washburn golfer Dawson Wills rounded out the top five in the Open Division.
In the Masters Division, Wakeeney’s Justin Sherfick posted a final round 5-under par 67 to take the division championship by two shots over past champion Sean Robertson of Salina.
In the Senior Division, Salina’s Greg Goode continued his winning ways with a two shot victory of Garden City’s Sean Thayer.
Thank you to the full field of players and to the staff at Buffalo Dunes Golf Course for hosting the 2020 championship! We look forward to seeing everyone at Mariah Hills Golf Course in Dodge City for the 2021 High Plains Amateur.
Jolliffe, Goode Take Kansas Senior Amateur Titles
Results, Prize Distribution & Skins
Wichita’s Mark Jolliffe added his name to the Dick Scholfield Trophy by besting the full field of players at the 40th Kansas Senior Amateur Championship on Tuesday at Crestview Country Club (North Course). Jolliffe, 51, posted rounds of 73-68–141 to edge 2019 Senior Amateur Champion Michael Holloway and 2015 Senior Amateur Champion Tim McKinnis by a single shot. Garden City’s Sean Thayer and Wichita’s Steve Newman rounded out the top five.
In the Super Senior Division, Salina’s Greg Goode added to his trophy case with another championship win. Goode, the 2018 & 2019 Kansas Senior Player of the Year and 2018 Kansas Super Senior Amateur Champion lapped the field for a three shot win. Goode posted rounds of 72-69–141 to win by three shots over Council Grove’s Tim Tyner. Lawrence’s Dick Stuntz took third in the Super Senior division.
Thank you to the membership and staff at Crestview Country Club for hosting the 40th Kansas Senior Amateur! We look forward to seeing everyone at Falcon Lakes Golf Club in 2021 for the 41st Kansas Senior Amateur.
Stous Wins Prairie Invitational
Posted on July 27, 2020 | Leave a Comment on Stous Wins Prairie Invitational
The weather couldn’t stop Rachel Stous from winning The Prairie Invitational on Wednesday.
Rachel Stous, Topeka, was crowned as the 2020 Prairie Invitational Champion. She found herself coming from behind going into today’s round after an uncharacteristic 77 during round one.
The 2019 Player of the Year, opened her round with back-to-back birdies on holes one and two followed by two more birdies on the front nine. As she made the turn, Stous bogeyed hole 11 and followed up with birdies on 13 and 15. On the 17th hole, play was suspended due to weather; the rain delay did not slow her down. Once she was back on the course, Stous held a three-shot lead going into her last hole. Despite a bogey on the 18th hole, she finished her round three-under-par and won by two shots over Audrey Judd.
Judd had three consistent rounds shooting 75-75-73. As a member at Shadow Glen Golf Club, she certainly knew how to play the course. She made an impressive birdie on hole 18 today to finish in second place.
Megan Lucas also made a run for the title during her round. Lucas, a member of the Wichita State Women’s Golf Team, shot even-par today. Lucas shared third place with Katy Winters. Winters, a former golfer at The University of Kansas, also shot even par today. On her back nine, she made three birdies in a row on holes 15, 16, and 17.
Round two leader, Madison Slayton, finished tied for fifth with Gianna Augustine.
Results >>
Image>>
Grant Wins Player’s Division
The Player’s Division
Today marked the final round of the Player’s Division. After a great first round, Beth Grant found herself in the lead heading into round two.
“I was thinking that I needed to play an under control and consistent round today. My lead felt great at the time, but I had to remind myself that the tournament was far from over,” Grant said.
Grant and Sheri Rehmer tied after 36 holes with two-day-totals of 164. Grant made a long putt on the 18th hole to send her into a playoff with Rehmer.
“[Making that putt felt] exhilarating, I never felt anything like it before,” said Grant.
They headed back to the 18th tee to begin their playoff. Both hit the green on their third shots. Rehmer had a long putt that she left short and Grant nearly made her 15-foot putt. Rehmer missed her short put coming back, giving Grant the Player’s Title. Grant also won the KC Junior Match Play earlier in July, making this her second Central Links Golf Championship Title of the summer. This marked the first playoff in Player’s Division history.
Although Rehmer did not win the Gross Title, she did take the crown in the Net Division. “Today I just wanted to strike the ball well. Playing against myself. My drives put me into a position to attack most holes,” Rehmer said.
The Open Division
Madison Slayton shot 68 yesterday giving her the lead going into round two. This morning she had a few bogies but made up for them on her back nine, shooting 78. She is tied for the lead with Rosie Klausner. Consistency has been key for Klausner as she shot two rounds of 73.
Stacy Dennis fired a 71 (-1) during today’s round. Dennis, the Executive Director at the Texas Golf Association, had the only round under par carded for the day.
Home course favorite, Audrey Judd, also posted two solid rounds of 75, putting her in solo fourth place.
With a crowd tied for fifth, it’s really anyone’s chance for the title going into the final round tomorrow.
Note: there was a cut for the Open Division after Round 2 that included the low 18 players & ties.
Pictures >>
Results>>
Slayton Fires 68 in Round One at The Prairie Invitational
OLATHE, KS – Madison Slayton, Wichita, leads The Prairie Invitational after Round One of three. Slayton opened her round with a birdie and never slowed down. She birdied holes 10, 13, and 14 on the back nine. She made an uncharacteristic bogey on 15 and followed it up with another birdie on the 16th hole.
“A lot of my birdies came from making some good putts, but I think my birdie on 13 stood out the most. Going into the round, I knew par was going to be a good score on that hole, so to birdie it was a plus,” Slayton said. She totaled six birdies on her day, shooting 68 (-4).
Four golfers are tied for second place with rounds of 73 (+1). Bri Bolden, Mokena, IL, had a consistent birdie to bogey ratio throughout her round. Rosie Klausner, Olathe, had a steady round making two birdies on her day. Anna Jensen’s, Dubuque, IA, round was highlighted by six birdies. Olivia Sobaski, Sedalia, MO, shot one-under on the front nine and held strong on the back despite two bogeys.
2019 Kansas Women’s Mid-Amateur Champion, Katy Winters, holds solo-sixth after shooting a round of 74 (+2). Winters, a resident of Andover, made four birdies on her day. Most notably, back-to-back birdies on holes 7 and 8.
The Kansas City Girl’s Match Play Champion, Beth Grant, finds herself in the lead after shooting 78. Grant had three birdies on her round.
Barbara Cusick, Prairie Invitational Committee Member, is tied for second place with Sheri Rehmer, shooting 83.
Sarah Brookfield, Prairie Invitational Committee Member, made a Hole-In-One on the 8th hole. Brookfield is in 17th place.
Play will begin at 7:30 AM on Tuesday.
View Full Results >>
Posted in Competitions, Regional Championships, Uncategorized, Women's Golf
Support Youth on Course on #GivingTuesday
#GivingTuesdayNow is a global day of generosity and unity, a day to come together and give back in response to the unprecedented need caused by COVID-19, no matter who or where we are.
GivingTuesday will start on Tuesday, May 5th to bring together the community and inspire millions of people worldwide to volunteer, perform acts of kindness, and donate their voices, time, money and goods. On the last GivingTuesday, December 3, 2019, the global giving day generated $2 billion on giving, just in the United States.
This campaign is taking place from its regular scheduled annual event on December 3rd as an emergency response to the unprecedented need caused by COVID-19.
Central Links Golf urges golf lovers and supporters to take this opportunity to give to our local golf programs such as Youth on Course – a great junior golf program designed to allow kids to play at participating golf courses for $5.
You can support Youth on Course in Kansas City by donating to the Golf Foundation of KC here. You can also donate via check.
During a time where everyone is affected and experiencing effects from this global pandemic, we can use this opportunity to remain connected through generosity.
For more information on the #GivingTuesday campaign, please see here.
Jacque Madison Leaves Central Links Golf
KC Hall of Fame Adds Four
©2020 Central Links Golf.
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BridgeBuilder™ 2019 Challenge: People on the Move
Read the Brief
Phase: Ideas Opportunity Areas: The Full Human Journey
Haitian Biomass Stoves to Help Refugees Worldwide: Keep Haitians from becoming refugees with local jobs while also utilizing refugee labor.
Inefficient stoves worsen life for refugees globally; millions of Haitian refugees are in the D.R: Export Haitian eco-stoves to ref. camps!
Written by Kevin Adair
Updated on 16:57, Aug 17, 2019
Stove and briquette demonstration for Earth Day in Haiti.
FdS ecological stove and briquette demonstration.
The FdS Gen 8 Institutional TLUD Stove can cook up to 100 servings of rice for school children.
The independent documentary featuring the work of FdS Haiti will be premiered in the US at the Freeland Film Festival in Green Lake, WI September 13 -15, 2019.
What problem does the idea help to solve and how does your solution work? (2,000 characters maximum)
Short video explaining the FdS ecological stove and briquette cooking system.
Still-frame from the documentary Chabon. That pile of wood becomes a small smoldering mound of charcoal, releasing 90% of its energy and carbon into the atmosphere with nothing but waste and 10% dirty charcoal as the result.
The most dangerous activity in many refugee and IDP settlements is gathering fuel for cooking. Mostly women are called upon to walk in dangerous unprotected areas near the camps for firewood that is more and more scarce. FdS efficient biomass stoves, produced in Haiti and available for increase wood combustion efficiency by over 4X, and by utilizing wood instead of charcoal in FdS stoves efficiency is improved 40+X. By utilizing available labor in settlements, stoves sent from Haiti can be assembled locally. Thus over twice as many stoves-parts can be sent for the same cost as the fully assembled stoves. The stoves can also utilize any available waste materials for cooking, including any local biomass waste (corn cobs / rice husks / peanut shells / packaging cardboard / etc). The jobs created in Haiti through making the stove-parts keep Haitians from becoming refugees as many are now in the Dominican Republic. Estimates as high as 2,000,000 Haitian refugees live illegally in the Dom. Rep. with no documentation and extremely limited access to education or healthcare. Many earn their survival with high-risk, terrible-pay, unreported jobs in the sugarcane industry. Since Haiti has over 70% underemployment, there is little-to-no incentive to establish legal residency in Haiti -- many have never lived in Haiti, as it was their grandparents who emigrated to the DR, but the grandchildren are doomed to their family's fate with no options for DR citizenship. Providing jobs for Haitians in Haiti is much preferable. Globally, many refugees in settlements are not allowed to work, so their available work-hours can be utilized in the stove-assembly process thus reducing costs and shipping requirements for the stove-parts. Also, if the location has available biomass waste, many varieties can be transformed into fuel briquettes which can burn efficiently in FdS stoves, and cannot be used without the efficient stoves. Exporting stove-parts from Haiti addresses multiple issues.
Geography of focus (500 characters)
Unlike other similarly developed states, Haiti has many positive long-term indicators: no war or water shortage, perfect climate / location for renewable energy, and no nearby states to contribute to Haiti’s lack of development. They have chronic hobbling factors, like their lack of roadway infrastructure, access to proper sanitation, and dwindling supply of dirty cooking fuel: charcoal. While providing 300K jobs, the industry destroys 10lb of wood for each 1lb of charcoal produced.
Building Bridges: What bridge does your idea build between people on the move and neighbors towards a shared future of stability and promise? (500 characters)
FdS could bridge the gap between the R&D of 8-generations of eco-stove improvements with the needs and underutilized labor of refugee/ IDP settlements. The FdS cooking system is versatile in that it can utilize any available fuel materials. We could use a “Send One, Deliver Two” (“SODT” ) system that could be adopted in all NGO projects. For stoves it would mean that the total cost of sending one assembled stove is the same as two self-assembled stoves by the end-user in the settlements.
What human need is your idea solving for? (1,000 characters)
The most basic need that is missing in both Haiti and settlements globally - the need that allows for the germination of higher-order needs such as joy, hope, and dignity is the need to be productive and provide for one's family. Doctors, professors, engineers, artists, farmers, and other 100% self-sustained productive human family members are running for their lives to avoid themselves and their families being killed. Then, they arrive in some form of physical safety, and they are not allowed to work for fear of taking jobs away from local people. This concept has to change. Jobs are not a zero-sum-game. Productivity begets productivity. Unlike so many NGOs in Haiti, FdS follows the jobs-not-gifts policy. What people need is the ability to use their talents to support their families. Gifts lead to further dependency. Jobs lead to self sustainability. FdS advocates empirical research and establishing a jobs standard for all NGO work: judge projects based on the number of jobs created.
What will be different within the community of focus as a result of implementing your idea? (1,000 characters)
The concept: "Send One; Deliver Two" can improve many developmental and humanitarian applications to benefit local communities. Food donations, for example, can be harmful if given to the general public. These donations should go to medical, educational and civil development programs. Feeding kids in a school-canteen makes the kids ready to learn and is much less dependency-harmful than donations to the general public. Food should be delivered in the largest packages possible to avoid individual plastic packaging waste. And, for each bag of food that is donated (sent) a similar bag of food should be purchased from a local farmer. Then international actions are not harming the local economies, but expanding the local markets. This change, along with an open-door policy allowing donors to visit implementation sites would allow for much more follow-up and follow-through. FdS is pioneering this revolution in the development sector. Please see our attached 50-page paper: Change is Hard.
What is the inspiration behind your idea? (1,000 characters)
One of the strongest inspirations for FdS Haiti is the Haitian concept of “Konbit.” Traditionally, when a community has a large project that needs to be accomplished individuals can work together to make it happen. Too often, people of any society forget the concept of Konbit, but FdS works to remember and program based on working together. Konbit is expressed in the FdS concept of Listen. Lead. Listen again. We operate with an open-door, open-source policy, working to include the concepts of practically all of the Haitians and the internationals sharing at FdS together. We have many additional inspirations, from Buckminster Fuller to programming from the MacArthur Foundation to Behavioral Economics and beyond. Our latest published scientific research paper, our latest theoretical peer-reviewed concept paper, and its accompanying study guide are included in the attachments, and they include many of the concepts that have inspired FdS.
Describe the dynamics of the community in which the idea is to be implemented. (1,000 characters)
In 2018, FdS Haiti hired 12 full-time and 31 part-time workers.
Haitian people face the perfect-storm of 70% underemployment, poorly allocated resources, shortsighted self-serving international entities, garbage-filled streets, environmental degradation, deforestation and government bureaucracy / corruption. The country cooks with 900,000 tons of charcoal annually, which, due to inefficiencies in charcoal production, causes the destruction of 9 million trees every year! Charcoal smoke also shortens Haitians' lives by 6 years. However the charcoal industry provides 300,000 jobs which is5% of the economy. Switching immediately to petroleum gas would cause major job loss.. Haiti's most vulnerable people are by far the most likely to make a meager income producing or selling charcoal. However, workers say, "It is hard and dirty work, where we breathe smoke and dust.” and, "We only make charcoal because there is no other work available; and without work we will starve." Charcoal also damages the health of the cooks, shortening lives by 6 years!
How does your idea leverage and empower community strengths and assets to help create an environment for success? (1,000 characters)
Haiti is the opposite of Las Vegas: Whatever happens in Haiti, EVERYONE knows about. Haiti is the perfect location to implement the Social-Eco Enterprise model. Haitian people have seen billions of US dollars of promises of improving conditions in the country. Now, FdSHaitian developmental partners share that they are ready to do the work required for their country’s improvement. Where 40 years of the best efforts of traditional NGOs have failed to improve conditions in Haiti, it is time for the SEE model to work with Haitians ready to work for their own steps forward. FdS has worked to learn from Haitian people every step of the way; please see our previous submissions to see how far the FdS project has come: https://challenges.openideo.com/challenge/bridgebuilder2/review/ecological-cookstoves-and-non-carbonized-briquette-cooking-system-in-haiti-saving-lives-saving-trees-creating-jobs-and-building-community.
What other partners or stakeholders will work alongside you in implementing the idea, if any? (1,000 characters)
One of the main focus points for developing FdS partnerships is local grass-roots organizations. FdS has worked with Haitian organizations from dozens of communities including Cite Soleil, Kafou Fe and Croix-du-Bouquets. We have worked with, currently work with, and/or are ready to expand our work with many international partners as well, including: the UN WFP, the US Embassy, the UNDP, the Canadian Embassy, the Clean Cooking Alliance, the UNEP, and all available partners ready to help improve the ecological and social environments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. (Also, regarding the following question, we work in the sector regarding leaving a community of origin because we work to create the jobs so people don't need to become Haitian refugees.) We work with others to help Haitians have as many opportunities as possible to work and provide for their families without needing to drain away from Haiti.
What part of the displacement journey is your solution addressing
Leaving a community of origin
Tell us how you'd describe the type of innovation you are proposing
Product: A new or enhanced physical product that creates value for end beneficiaries
Pilot: We have started to implement the idea as a whole with a first set of real users. The feasibility of an innovation is tested in a small-scale and real world application (i.e. 3-15% of the target population)
Group or Organization Name
Fuego del Sol Haiti / FdS Haiti
Tell us more about your group or organization [or lived experience as a displaced person?] (1000 characters)
FdS Haiti is the first and longest continually operating social enterprise on the island of Hispaniola following the Mission Statement: FdS Haiti works to facilitate ecologically and socially beneficial development in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Local people are consulted and empowered throughout the R & D and implementation process in a Co-Creation model. Each additional FdS project / program must be financially sustainable and be developed to build on existing FdS activities to grow an infrastructure / eco-system of mutually beneficial developmental activities in conjunction with community, international, and local partners. FdS follows the strategy of: Listen, Lead, Listen Again. First we listen to learn the needs and wants of the local population, then we offer leadership and logistics to best address the community’s issues, and then we listen again to see how to best adapt the solutions to the cultural context of the country.
www.fdshaiti.com
Type of submitter
We are a For-Profit Startup or Startup Social Enterprise
Organization Headquarters: Country
Organization Headquarters: City / State
Tabarre / Port-au-Prince
Kevin Adair
FdS Administrative Team Bios.pdf
Adair - Change Is Hard_ Study Guide. Summary. Digest.pdf
Accompanying document for 50-page Change is Hard concept paper.
Adair - Change is Hard_ Publication Version.pdf
Latest FdS Behavioral Economics Concept Document presented for peer review.
FdS Gasifier Cookstoves v Haitian Charcoal Cooking Dec18.pdf
Published Peer Reviewed survey demonstrating that FdS stoves release zero air impurities in the kitchen during cooking where traditional Haitian stoves emit 6X the EPA "Evacuate!" level of carbon monoxide (CO) and 12X the WHO maximum level of smoke particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5). Haitian charcoal cooking is an immediate health emergency, and the cooking conditions in settlements worldwide are likely just as bad. FdS is unique in directing focus to these crucial conditions.
FdS 2019 Cooking Brochure.pdf
Zulfiqar Deo
09:53, Aug 21, 2019
Kevin Adair Thanks for sharing this. Be great to have your thoughts on our approach - Business financing for refugee entrepreneurs . Look forward to knowledge sharing.
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The Danger of Sin
Category: Bible Studies
Heb 3:13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called today; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
The Scripture has much to say about the dangerous nature of sin. Christians can, and do, sin. But if they willfully choose to live in sin, the Scripture is clear - they will be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
Sin is deceitful because it never tells the truth of its ultimate effect on our heart. The Holy Spirit says that sin will harden you meaning your heart will no longer respond to God, to His Spirit, or to His Word.
Sin is deceitful because it makes one insensitive to their conscience. If we continue to overrule our conscience then eventually it will become silent. It will no longer speak. And because we no longer feel the guilt of our behavior we can think that all is well. But the opposite is true; a silent conscience is not a sign of holy living but a hardened heart.
Sin is deceitful because it makes one insensitive to the warning of friends. Others can see that our choices are taking us to a dangerous place. But the deceptive nature of sin silences every warning voice. A person who loves their sin will not listen to God, His Word, the Holy Spirit, preachers/teachers, and will not listen to their friends or family. The hardened heart is a heart that no longer hears.
Sin is deceitful because it makes one insensitive to the personal cost of their sin. It is amazing how one can suffer terribly from their own sinfulness and yet feel no compelling reason to change. The harmful evidence of their choices is before them, but they refuse to see. Oh, they see with their eyes, but not with their heart. Sin deadens the heart to the need of change.
Sin is deceitful because it tells you that you are blessed and have no need of repentance. We all have made wrong decisions and God can, and does, bless people who have made wrong decisions. Solomon is a good example of such a man. Solomon was the son of David, King of Israel and upon David's death Solomon was chosen by God to be King of Israel. He was blessed with wisdom, riches, and favor. He brought peace to Israel and even built a House for the Lord. But early in his reign Solomon made decisions that would eventually turn his heart from God. Solomon made a treaty with Egypt and then married the daughter of Pharaoh, King of Egypt. Solomon should have never made a treaty with Egypt, and he should have never married the daughter of Pharaoh, and he should have repented of these decisions. Solomon knew God's admonition against making treaties with foreign nations and he knew God said to not marry foreign women. But for his own reasons, Solomon ignored what he knew to be true and chose Pharaoh's daughter over God's Word. This decision planted the seeds of his future apostasy. Once we willfully open our heart to compromise then heart decay begins, and will not stop until we turn from our sin.
Sin is patient. It makes long range plans and is willing to wait on our destruction. If one is willing to continue in their sin then their sin quietly works. If one loves their sin then it will not disturb them but will silently work until the soul is destroyed. Only a foolish person thinks sin will not harm them. One can love their sin or they can love God, but not both. If sin is tolerated, protected, and loved, then sin will deaden our love for God.
Here is Solomon, King of Israel, at the beginning of his reign, one of the greatest kings to have ever lived, making decisions that will eventually turn his heart from God. Solomon not only married Pharaoh’s daughter but continued to marry foreign women, hundreds of them. When he grew old, his foreign wives then turned his heart from the worship of the God of Israel to the worship of demons.
Solomon, at the end of his life, was informed by God that his behavior had displeased the Lord. But Solomon apparently felt no guilt over his sin. This is the hardening effect of sin. We can be warned of God yet feel nothing. Solomon's hard heart blinded him, He saw no reason to change. He lost a sensitive heart and could no longer see that darkness had changed him. At the end of Solomon's life sin had finished it's work - Solomon's heart had turned from following the Lord.
Look at the sad commentary of one who compromises with sin.
1Ki 11:1 But King Solomon loved many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites—
1Ki 11:2 from the nations of whom the LORD had said to the children of Israel, "You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods." Solomon clung to these in love.
1Ki 11:3 And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart.
1Ki 11:4 For it was so, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned his heart after other gods; and his heart was not loyal to the LORD his God, as was the heart of his father David.
1Ki 11:5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.
1Ki 11:6 Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD, and did not fully follow the LORD, as did his father David.
1Ki 11:7 Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, on the hill that is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech the abomination of the people of Ammon.
1Ki 11:8 And he did likewise for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.
1Ki 11:9 So the LORD became angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned from the LORD God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice,
1Ki 11:10 and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods; but he did not keep what the LORD had commanded.
Solomon who had built a house for the Lord, at the end of his life, built houses for demons, the gods of his foreign wives. And he feels nothing. Sin, like a snake, swallows its prey. Sin, like a fatal disease, works silently until there is no recovery. This is how sin affected Solomon. Even though blessed of the Lord sin won Solomon's heart. Because of the deceitful nature of sin Solomon had no heart to obey the Lord. We should learn from Solomon - if sin has the power to turn his heart then sin has the power to turn my heart; if sin will harden Solomon then it will harden me.
So, what is the answer? The Scripture tells us to not fail of the grace of God, Heb 12:15. The answer to compromise is found in repentance. Grace is found in honesty before God. If we acknowledge and turn from our sin, if we are transparent and confess our heart condition, then we find forgiveness and restoration. God is merciful, He will forgive, He will cleanse our heart from all unrighteousness and He will put our foot in a sure place.
If you wish to comment on this article I may be reached at the below email address.
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John Comeaux
Stephen F. Austin wins 15th straight, Southland title
NACOGDOCHES, Texas (AP) — Gavin Kensmil scored 17 points with 10 rebounds and Stephen F. Austin won its 15th straight game and the Southland Conference regular...
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Johnson, Harris lift Stephen F. Austin past Drexel 82-67
NACOGDOCHES, Texas (AP) — Cameron Johnson and Kevon Harris scored 18 points apiece as Stephen F. Austin defeated Drexel 82-67 on Saturday. ...
Johnson lifts Stephen F. Austin past Niagara 89-80
NACOGDOCHES, Texas (AP) — Cameron Johnson came off the bench to score 19 points to carry Stephen F. Austin to an 89-80 win over Niagara on Wednesday night. ...
Delaney carries Sam Houston St. over Stephen F. Austin 68-57
Associated Press Mar. 09, 2019 08:54 PM EST
NACOGDOCHES, Texas (AP) — Josh Delaney posted 19 points as Sam Houston State defeated Stephen F. Austin 68-57 on Saturday. Kai Mitchell had 12 points...
Lewis, Hall lead Alabama over Stephen F. Austin 79-69
NACOGDOCHES, Texas (AP) — Kira Lewis Jr. had 17 points and eight assists, Donta Hall added 12 points and 14 rebounds, and Alabama beat Stephen F. Austin 79-69 on...
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Humanitarians work in some of the most volatile and insecure environments in the world. Even as they come under increasing attack, humanitarian workers find ways to continue delivering life-saving services to populations in need. Dr. Abby Stoddard has coordinated CIC’s research on the topic of humanitarian crises. Dr. Stoddard has written extensively on issues in humanitarian action since 2000. CIC has provided consulation to international humanitarian organizations and emergency relief programs.
Program(s): Congo Research Group, Prevention and Peacebuilding
Region/Country: East Asia, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa
How Much Lockdown is Enough?
Lockdown measures have been an integral tool in the fight against COVID-19. But they come at a high cost, given their impacts on economies, employment and incomes, education, food systems, mental health and even the potential for civil unrest. This policy briefing examines how countries are balancing the need for lockdown with policy measures to alleviate their effects and plans for reopening.
Co-Author(s): Paul Von Chamier, Nendirmwa Noel
Topic(s): Crises, Global Governance, Humanitarian Crises
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Publication Date: Apr 18, 2020
Topic(s): Crises, Financing, Global Governance, Humanitarian Crises
Program(s): Humanitarian Crises, Multilateral Reform
COVID-19 and Community Responses
This policy briefing examines how governments, multilateral organizations, and international financial institutions can leverage existing and new community-based responses to deal more effectively with the health, social, and economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.
Topic(s): 2030 Agenda, Food Security, Global Governance, Humanitarian Crises
The Challenge of a Lifetime: Ensuring Universal Access to COVID-19 Health Technologies
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Adopting a Sustaining Peace Lens to the COVID-19 Response
Annan is security crisis envoy
Kofi Annan Appointed as Special Envoy: New Hope for Syria?
Kofi Annan to be Syria crisis envoy
Intervention in Syria Is Morally Justified—and Completely Impractical
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Cannes 2016: Staying Vertical review
Published on 12 May 2016 11 December 2017 by CineVue
Following up his arthouse hit Stranger by the Lake, which played in Un Certain Regard in 2013, agent provocateur Alain Guiraudie returns to Cannes and the main competition with Staying Vertical, an impishly surreal comedy that delights in shocking, prodding and baffling its besieged audience. Leo (Damien Bonnard) is a wandering filmmaker, or at least Guiraudie’s idea of a filmmaker. He roams rural France looking for inspiration. A young man at the side of the road stirs in him inspiration of some kind and so Leo pulls a U-turn and asks if the chap had considered a career in the movies, unaware of the cliché.
Spurned, Leo moves on and on a hike finds a shepherdess, armed with a rifle and wary of the wolves that have been reintroduced into the French countryside and now play havoc with the flock. A single mother bored with her role, Marie (India Hair) is more amenable and following some typically in your face sex, conceive a baby. Cut to baby’s head emerging from a fully dilated vagina, then shoulders, complete with blood, pus and vaginal tearing. Now this can be seen as the enfant terrible shocking us, or it could be us being still shocked by what effectively we’ve all experienced – though some of us can only identify with one of the participants – but would still prefer not to see.
Somewhat surprisingly, Leo takes to fatherhood and continues to delay the script he is writing as he takes over care duties from Laura who is dissatisfied with Leo’s lack of commitment and her own lot, looking after her father’s farm, and departs with her kids in tow. However, here the tale begins to turn twisty as Leo continues his pilgrim’s progress. Fleeing the farm after Marie’s brutish father (Raphaël Thiéry) takes a shine to him, Leo also continues to dip into the lives of the homeless, the young man he originally met and the old man (Christian Bouillette) who might be his lover or father, or possibly both given that everyone in Guiraudie seems to be up for anything. Leo occasionally takes a moment to row up a river to meet a new age healer who sticks plants to him like medical sensors and urges him to finish his script.
Guiraudie’s humour is self-referential and at times hilarious. His tendency to shock might seem adolescent but he’s also careful to identify taboos that perhaps shouldn’t be taboos at all. Staying Vertical isn’t supposed to make any realistic sense – this is Guiraudie’s universe, his characters just live there – and there’s a dreamlike logic as characters couple and decouple in ever new arrangements. The term ‘dreamlike’ also snugly fits Bonnard’s somnambulant persona as he pushes his slightly gormless presence into evermore absurd situations, finding himself destitute and homeless, a victim retreating back to the farm as a form of penance. He’s ultimately a man searching for wolves – but terrified of finding them.
The 69th Cannes Film Festival takes place from 11-22 May 2016. Follow our coverage here.
Cannes, John Bleasdale
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Next Next post: Cannes 2016: Paterson review
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Chromosome synapsis in pachytene spermatocytes of F1 hybrid E. tancrei (2n = 49, NF = 56). a The scheme reflects a prognosis for chromosome synapsis in prophase I of meiosis [M1=Rb(3.18), M2=Rb(2.18), and M3=Rb(2.11)] b Closed SC pentavalent. Immunostaining with antibodies to SC protein 3 (green) and to the centromere ACA (red) c The scheme of chromosome synapsis in the structure of SC pentavalent (see Fig. 1b). Black dots mark centromere positions d Electron micrograph of spread spermatocyte from F1 hybrid. Closed SC pentavalent is formed from three metacentrics with monobrachial homology (M1, M2, and M3) and two acrocentrics (A1, A2). The arrow shows the fragment of SC between the short arms of homologous acrocentrics. Gaps are marked with asterisks. A sex bivalent (XX) does not associate with the multivalent. Nb – nucleolus-like body e The scheme of chromosome synapsis in the structure of SC pentavalent (see Fig. 1d) f A complex case of the association of sex bivalent (XX) g The scheme of the association of sex bivalent (XX) with an autosome (see Fig. 1f) h An association of sex bivalent (XX) i The scheme of the association of sex bivalent (XX) with an autosome (see Fig. 1h). Scale bars: 1 μm (b, d, i); 2 μm (e, f, h).
Part of: Matveevsky S, Bakloushinskaya I, Tambovtseva V, Romanenko S, Kolomiets O (2015) Analysis of meiotic chromosome structure and behavior in Robertsonian heterozygotes of Ellobius tancrei (Rodentia, Cricetidae): a case of monobrachial homology. Comparative Cytogenetics 9(4): 691-706. https://doi.org/10.3897/CompCytogen.v9i4.5674
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This Newborn’s Burrito-Themed Photo Shoot Is Ridiculously Cute
He's so cute we could just eat him up! 💕
Augusta Statz , Simplemost · May 30, 2019
Meeting at Qdoba changed the course of their lives.
Jessica and Joshua Schuster, now husband and wife, met when she started her new job at Qdoba and he came in to order a burrito. Joshua had no idea he’d meet the girl of his dreams while ordering fast food. But considering he was quite smitten with Jessica, he proceeded to keep coming back to the location to order Qdoba — and kept asking her out.
“I thought it was off how much he was eating there, then he had asked me out,” Jessica told PopSugar. “I politely declined and he continued to ask me out daily until I finally gave in. So Qdoba pretty much laid the foundation of our future!”
And the rest is history!
Adding to Jessica’s three other children from a previous relationship, the Milwaukee couple welcomed a little bundle of joy of their own, a son named Sebastian, on May 13.
When it came time for a newborn photoshoot, the couple couldn’t resist showing off their own little burrito. So the couple enlisted Jessica’s sister, Sarah Swihart, a photographer, to make their Qdoba-themed dream shoot a reality.
Boy, did she really nail it! You can see the end result on the Sarah Swihart Photography Facebook page:
Swihart told NBC’s “Today” that while you can purchase a blanket that looks like a tortilla online, none of them would arrive in time for her sister’s due date, so she actually wound up making the blanket herself.
She completed the burrito look by wrapping Sebastian’s lower half in an actual burrito sheet from Qdoba, and of course, she used Qdoba chips, guacamole, salsa, and more as props.
The final shot was so impressive, that Qdoba shared the image on their Instagram account and congratulated the couple on their burrito baby!
“A whole new meaning to #BurritoBaby! Congratulations to Qdoba (639 W Layton Ave, Milwaukee) manager Jessica and her family on baby Sebastian,” the company wrote:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx2u0KsBtNO/?utm_source=ig_embed
The couple could have never imagined this photo shoot would get as much attention as it did, but the father told Simplemost in an email that he couldn’t be more excited about it for his baby boy:
“His photo shoot going viral is absolutely amazing. I can’t wait till he gets older so I can show it to him,” Joshua wrote.
The Schusters also paid homage to Joshua’s part-time job at Domino’s with a pizza-themed shoot, which was also posted to Swihart’s Facebook page:
The dad also told Simplemost there aren’t plans for more food-themed photos of Sebastian in the works just yet, but if there were to be — that’d be fine by us because he’s so cute, you could just eat him up!
Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled Sebastian’s last name. We regret the error.
Tags:babyburritoburrito babyburrito photo shootdomino'sfast foodnewbornnewborn photo shootQdobaviral photo
6 must-read bits of wisdom from Oprah's college commencement speeches
Harry Styles and Stevie Nicks sang 'Landslide' together and it will give you chills
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Pielke and Lomborg accused of “fact mongering”
Posted on 10 Jan 19 by Paul Matthews 57 Comments
Here’s a remarkable example of the post-truthiness of some elements of contemporary academia.
A magazine called Issues in Science and Technology has published an article Fear Mongering & Fact Mongering, by Adam Briggle, a philosopher at a third-rate institution called University of North Texas.
The article starts by dismissing the old-fashioned claptrap of Poincaré and Feynman, and then talks about research misconduct and ‘responsible’ research. But the main thrust of the article is to try to introduce a concept of “fact mongering”.
Where fear mongering can stoke irrational panic, fact mongering can cause irrational calm and complacency.
Briggle illustrates the distinction by referring to the notorious alarmist article The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, full of irresponsible pseudo-scientific fear-mongering about “panic”, “terrors”, “death” and “destruction” (which, as I noted recently, has serious consequences for the mental health of those who fall for it). Briggle mentions that the article was criticised by scientists, but doesn’t have the decency to link to any of these criticisms, such as this one where the Wallace-Wells article is described as “Alarmist, Imprecise/Unclear, Misleading” by a team of climate scientists including Richard Betts, Chris Colose and Victor Venema. Even Michael Mann says that it exaggerates.
Amazingly, Briggle claims that the scientists who corrected Wallace-Wells’s alarmist falsehoods were irresponsible fact-mongers:
It prompted some denunciations, but also soul-searching among the climate science community about its rhetoric. Perhaps in their desire not to be discounted as fear-mongers, scientists had become fact-mongers. They may have assumed that they don’t really have a “fact” until it is scrubbed clean of all emotion, especially fear. This is certainly not misconduct in a narrow sense, but it may well count as a form of irresponsible research. Has the climate science community hid behind neutral facts and insufficiently scared the public? If so, theirs would be a rhetorical, not a logical, failure.
Briggle highlights two people who are guilty of fact-mongering: Roger Pielke Jr and Bjorn Lomborg. He says he was a student of Pielke’s 15 years ago, and is concerned about Pielke’s WSJ article on natural disasters (edit: paywalled, but there’s a free version available at his blog).
Thus, I was surprised to see his op-ed counseling us to be “factful” when it comes to climate change. He has, it seems, adopted Lomborg’s view that there are facts on one hand and irrational fears on the other. And the fact is that despite all the bad news, times have never been better. He argues that there is little evidence that climate change has made weather more extreme. Indeed, natural disasters are claiming fewer lives than 50 years ago, and as a proportion of global gross domestic product the costs of natural disasters have actually gone down.
Pielke has been delivering this message for years, and as with Lomborg it has earned him the ire of many environmental scientists. As far as I can tell, his thesis is logically, or empirically, flawless. It is the rhetoric of it that has me wondering. He highlights a set of facts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) about specific weather phenomena. What he doesn’t mention are the words in bold at the top of the same report stating that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and changes are “unprecedented.” When Pielke says the IPCC substantiates his claims, that may be literally true, but also rhetorically questionable. When does a reasonable argument slip into cherry-picking, or cherry-picking slide into misrepresentation?
So according to Briggle, Pielke’s article in the WSJ about natural disasters should have included some statements from the IPCC that have nothing whatsoever to do with disasters. Briggle also appears to believe that the concept of using facts to rebut irrational fears is a new idea invented by Lomborg. And that Pielke’s logical, flawless thesis is rhetorically questionable.
Pielke has a letter in response (and there are other letters too), published in the same journal and also posted at his blog.
I’ve long argued that the world has seen a dramatic drop in lives lost to disasters, and that as poverty around the world has been reduced, the economic toll of disasters has not increased as fast as increasing global wealth. This is indeed good news. These are hardly controversial views, as they are also conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which produces periodic assessments of climate science, impacts, and economics, as well as being indicators of progress under the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.
He says that Briggle is “late to the party”, mentioning previous smears that he has been subjected to for failing to join in the fear-mongering. Briggle’s article
represents yet another effort from within the academy to silence others whose views are deemed politically unwelcome or unacceptable. At most research institutions, the penalties for researchers who engage in FFP are severe, and often include termination of employment. Of course, Briggle is not alone in sending a powerful and chilling message about which views are deemed acceptable and which are not.
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57 thoughts on “Pielke and Lomborg accused of “fact mongering””
10 Jan 19 at 6:11 pm
Here’s Lomborg’s response
OMG: Some climate-worried people want to outlaw climate arguments that may be "logically, or empirically, flawless" but could "cause irrational calm and complacency"
The reality is that our expensive but ineffective climate policies need to be challenged https://t.co/eKUcRUL7qt
— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) January 9, 2019
So, presumably, in Briggle’s mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, having in one’s possession “logically and empirically flawless” facts and publicly sharing those facts is equivalent to having one’s cake and eating it.
Folks who are emotively (not reasonably) convinced, have to turn logic upside-down in order to make the world fit their convictions.
rogerpielkejr says:
Full WSJ op-ed (free access):
https://rogerpielkejr.com/2018/08/17/some-good-news-about-natural-disasters-of-all-things/
A Briggle. A brittle niggle?
I’ve just read the last three Cliscep threads. Apologies that it’s been a long while since I did that. They’re all a pleasure to take in.
The stupidity of the attack on Pielke and Lomborg says once again that consensus central knows it’s losing grip, as shown in France (as explained powerfully by Geoff).
Don’t let facts and logic get in the way of “doing the right thing”. The bedrock of the road to hell.
What is philosophy coming to, even in North Texas?
So odd that a factmonger (a purveyor of facts) should be considered negatively. It’s crazy.
Briggle gives academics a bad name.
Would you buy a used concept from this man?
10 Jan 19 at 10:44 pm
Assertions and propaganda are more important than evidence or data – because they say so 😐
Briggle is an anti-intellectual, a negative intelligence.
It is great to hear from you.
Please continue being a fact and ethics monger.
Joe Public says:
” …. by Adam Briggle, a philosopher at a third-rate institution called University of North Texas.”
Apposite souvenir mugs are available.
https://www.findmeagift.co.uk/gifts/black-and-white-unt-mug.html?gclid=CjwKCAiA99vhBRBnEiwAwpk-uMtZmM4GwhjR_uY4JSkqnxPFXT4-dKznLQC7vqnULsdmEEytMIkCVRoCltkQAvD_BwE
dpy6629 says:
11 Jan 19 at 2:28 am
Thanks for this Paul. Sometimes I really wonder about the whole academic establishment and its increasing devotion to ideology. I no longer donate to Universities.
Morally and ethically the obligation of scientists is to tell the truth, to not ignore differing opinions, and to not succumb to political activism or indeed exaggeration and misleading people. Resplandy anyone?
Anyone who is warmer than room temperature must realize that on balance the media are falsely scaring the public about lots of things including climate change. They cover up things that can’t be blamed on their current list of witches. That helps no one except the bank accounts of the media who can still get people to tune in for such emotional “stimulation.” I have come to distrust anything I read in the media. When I see a scientific paper with a political press release, I want to find the papers that give a counter point.
For science the real problem is one of trust. The public has gradually lost confidence in elites in Western cultures. That is affecting science as it has become less objective and more activist.
Editor: You are on notice that we shall be following the same policy here regarding comments as you do at your site. Which is to say, anything we don’t like we will edit or delete.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is a site that is largely dismissive of the risks associated with AGW. Most here seem to think that it’s exaggerated, not a big deal (if it exists at all), and isn’t something we need to do much about. Here you are defending two of those highlighted in Adam Briggle’s article. That would seem to suggest that these are people who present information in a way that people here find appealing. That would seem to suggest that at least part of what is being highlighted in the article is broadly correct; rhetoric is important.
Clearly the message coming from many researchers is that AGW is serious, could have substantial negative impacts in the not too distant future (some of which may already be materialising) and will require significant action soon. Yet two people who claim to be presenting information that is consistent with the available evidence seem to be saying things that appeal to people who are largely dispute the seriousness of anthropogenically-driven climate change.
So, even if you believe that the latter is the appropriate message, it doesn’t really change that this illustrates the importance of rhetoric. The same information can – in some cases – be used to draw quite different conclusions. That was certainly one of the points in Adam Briggle’s article and it’s hard to see how this post isn’t essentially confirming that.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is a site that is largely dismissive of the risks associated with AGW. Most here seem to think that it’s exaggerated, not a big deal (if it exists at all), and isn’t something we need to do much about.”
You’re wrong. This is a far more accurate and subtle interpretation of the views of most people who contribute to this site, concerning the risks associated with man-made climate change:
“If Ellsberg’s Paradox teaches us anything, it is that our aversion to uncertainty makes us do stupid things. We like to think we are rational creatures, deciding upon courses of action that promise the greatest benefit with the minimum of risk. But sadly this is not true. Most people who claim to be making a risk-based decision are doing nothing of the sort – they are, instead, being ambiguity averse. They seek the course of action that involves the least ambiguity and they wouldn’t have a clue what the risks truly are.
Ambiguity aversion is what we sceptics stand accused of when we insist on the removal of uncertainties before committing to climate change policies. In contrast, the presupposition made by those demanding action is that the delays incurred will heighten the risk, therefore a precautionary approach is advocated.6 However, those who advocate such precaution are just as much running scared from ambiguity as the sceptics are. They would much rather go for the devil they know than accept the psychological torment that comes with the uncertainty of catastrophe. At the end of the day, this is just Pascal’s wager.”
Quoted from John Ridgway’s excellent recent article:
https://cliscep.com/2019/01/04/regrets-ive-had-a-few-but-then-again/
Whether subtle, or not, it seems clear that the views here are different to those of people who think climate change is a serious issue, that could produce significantly negative impacts, and that we should be taking action soon. I’m not trying to judge the views here, I’m simply trying to establish that the views here are broadly different from those who regard AGW as serious. Do you agree?
Further to above comment Ken, Briggle’s ludicrous definition of “fact-mongering” is but another perverse and bizarre attempt to remove uncertainty from the debate. Also from John’s article above:
“Of course, the other way of avoiding having to deal with ambiguity is to convince oneself it doesn’t exist – a strategy that seems to lie behind much of the rhetoric that increasingly dominates the climate change debate. It seems that the possibility of future catastrophe is no longer motive enough to take evasive action; what we need instead is the certainty of such catastrophe. Surely, according to the rhetoric du jour, there is no uncertainty and it is not a matter of risk. In fact, we are not even talking about the future. Just look at what is happening right now! And yet, in the midst of all of this, we still have the conspiracist merchants of doubt, seemingly unaware that there is no longer any room for their merchandise. Why aren’t these people in jail already?
Well, this might be the sort of self-assured narrative that suits those who do not like ambiguity, but it certainly doesn’t help when the reality is that we are attempting a risk-based decision in the face of deep uncertainties that obscure the levels of risk. One can speak of climate change deniers, but there is nothing more denialist than the construction of a fantasy world bereft of ambiguity, just because one desperately seeks a gamble that is free from it.”
Yes Ken, it is self-evidently obvious that the views here are divergent from the mainstream approach to managing the risk associated with climate change. But it is wrong to say that the majority here are simply dismissive of the risk identified; it is more that it has been incorrectly processed, assessed and responded to.
Fine, I wasn’t trying to be judgemental. I was simply making the point that your views are divergent from the mainstream and you seem to find the rhetoric presented by those highilighted in Adam Briggle’s article appealing. Those highlighted typically claim to be presenting information that is consistent with, for example, the IPCC and yet what they present seems to appeal to those who have views that are divergent from the mainstream. Hence that would seem to be consistent with one of the things being highlighted in the article; rhetoric can influence how people interpret what is being presented.
> That would seem to suggest that these are people who present information in a way that people here find appealing
Being honest is appealing to some people. Not to you evidently.
This post isn’t about Lomborg and Pielke, it’s about the irresponsible post-truth agenda of Briggle.
“Fine, I wasn’t trying to be judgemental. I was simply making the point that your views are divergent from the mainstream and you seem to find the rhetoric presented by those highilighted in Adam Briggle’s article appealing.”
Regardless of whether you were trying or not to be judgemental, the effect of your incorrect statement was to invite judgement from the ill informed.
Speaking personally, it is not Pielke’s ‘rhetoric’ that I find of interest, it is his factual assessment of the evidence (or lack of) for climate change affecting the incidence of extreme weather. I suspect most sceptics share my opinion in that regard. Focusing exclusively on Pielke Jr.’s alleged poor manner of delivery of those facts is totally disingenuous, akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Sounds like you’re suggesting that I engaged in irresponsible rhetoric 😉
Editor: No, but I am accusing you of irresponsible deleting of comments at your blog. Our team will work together on deciding how your comments will be treated at this venue going forward.
11 Jan 19 at 11:41 am
Lomborg and Pielke are condemned and trashed by Ken and his peers for not lying and misrepresenting the facts sufficiently enough for the climate consensus.
And like a true banal ignorati, he comes here to tssk tssk those who point that out. His willingness to come ask idiotarian questions here while strictly censoring skeptics at his blog is always worth noting. It is proof of his bad faith and closed mindedness.
Ken fits right in with the anti-intellectual, anti-ethical culture of the climate consensus and it’s philosopher.
Wasn’t there a paper Ken put his name on that would never be accused of “fact mongering”?
But the Ken is at home with the 3rd rate level of intellect and ethics that the climate consensus culture thrives in.
If Ken’s ability to miss a point pervades other aspects of his life, he could trip and deny he hit the ground.
Being human, we can never be free of rhetoric. Nor likely, could we operate as a society without some (it is a means of mass persuasion that we cannot currently replace, wholly). But to say that a lack of rhetoric is essentially a (dangerous) rhetoric in itself, is I think a problem at the heart of the Briggle article. From the article:
“…Lomborg made the rhetorical decision to choose a set of facts that are not scary. But his critics had plenty of frightening facts to throw back at him.”
If the latter facts are indeed scary of their own accord, and not because of added rhetoric, then this is fine and may the facts do battle. But if those frightening facts are only frightening because of rhetoric, then this is not a fair battle because rhetoric, especially of the highly emotive / scary variety, adds a powerful ingredient for persuading mass audiences.
“As far as I can tell, his [Lomborg’s] thesis is logically, or empirically, flawless.”
Everyone who makes an argument will stake a position; it is a high accolade to say that position is flawless. If, as Briggle later implies, there is nevertheless a super-set argument that is much more scary, then as long as this is by intrinsic virtue of its facts not merely by added rhetoric, Lomborg’s thesis could never have been flawless to start with. Acknowledging that humans cannot probably zero out rhetoric, doesn’t mean that we should let it overwhelm the facts, and with this in mind we do know, at least theoretically and in the long-run if not always at the moment of delivery, how much is too much. If the rhetoric leads to serious group-think within the science orgs or indeed wider society, then it’s gone too far because group-think (given enough time) will always track to an emergent (and therefore wrong) answer, rather than staying with the evidence to date or withholding judgement.
ATTP must surely be one of the most irresponsible fools around, forever wringing his hands and telling us that we are doomed without any rational basis whatsoever for anything he says.
The climate echo chamber is weird.
Why would someone block me on Twitter & then talk about me constantly, in the process, spreading lies about my views?
No one needs to speculate on my views, which I’ve written about & of course, he could just ask me 🤷♂️
⤵️https://t.co/91I6JE8G77
— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) January 11, 2019
Roger Pielke’s comment at Ken’s blog:
Ken Rice: You’ve blocked me on Twitter, so I will respond once here. This is bullsh*t:
“What I think they actually do is say a bunch of things that basically suggest that there isn’t really much to worry about and then, when challenge, say something like (I paraphrase) “climate change is real and we should do something about it”. ”
I’ve never said anything remotely like that and much to the contrary. This is not irresponsible rhetoric, for a professor this is just unethical, full stop.
They are a strange bunch, over at ATTP. No wonder he needs to come over here for some fresh air.
Paul, Thanks for bringing the Briggle article to our attention. Three choice quotes stand out for me:
“Perhaps in their desire not to be discounted as fear-mongers, scientists had become fact-mongers.”
I shudder at the thought that the scientists decided one day that they had to become fact-mongers. What were they before this epiphany? Not scientists, presumably.
“If so, theirs would be a rhetorical, not a logical, failure.”
But I thought that the climate change facts spoke for themselves. I jest of course.
“…that may be literally true, but also rhetorically questionable.”
That’s okay by me. I quite like my truth to be literal. I’m done with all of the figurative and metaphorical stuff.
Also, Jaime, thanks for the support. It is very gratifying.
Skipped through the thread at ATTP. That certainly is some very weird and not so wonderful rhetoric and not a hint of fact-mongering that I could detect.
Fact mongering requires ethics mongering and so tends to be tedious and requires things like critical thinking and rational thought.
Fear mongering is much more streamlined since it requires nothing more than a focus on fear.
Ken and Briggle, et al, demonstrate so well just how streamlined fear mongering really is.
Carbonicus says:
How fitting.
Just this week, Blunder Woman, aka She Guevara aka Alexandria Maduro Chavez said:
“I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct, than about being morally right”.
So, follow along here…..facts don’t matter and morality is what the Left decides it is at any given moment on any given issue.
Shub Niggurath says:
“I wasn’t trying to be judgemental. I was simply making the point that your views are divergent from the mainstream”
To the contrary. Jaime’s views, and skeptics’ views are mainstream. Worrying about CO2 on a daily basis is a niche concern.
If you are ‘mainstream’ and you drive a car and/or go about your life as usual, it is you who is ‘ largely dismissive of the risks associated with AGW.’
Yes against my better judgment I read some of that ATTP post. It’s mindnumbingly silly and a waste of time to analyze people’s public record with that level of nitpicking. I guess this is what the pseudo science of “science communication” has come to. Rubbish mostly.
What ATTP, Lewandowsky, Orskes, Mann & gang are after is conformity to the revealed consensus.
ATTP, when confronted with even direct quotes about apocalyptic drivel, generally denies backing the transparent bs.
Yet he dodges actually criticizing and never dares be as tough as Steve Mosher in trying to police his side.
So Ken’s fleas are from the bed he chose; not an accidental infestation….
Jaime: “…not a hint of fact-mongering that I could detect”.
Suggesting a proud new strapline:
“No facts were mongered in the making of this blog.”
Richard, yes, it’s a term one could have fun with. I wonder whether Adam Briggle may come to regret introducing it.
I’m also imagining a movie inspired by “The Horse-Whisperer” starring Roger Pielke Jnr as “The Fact-Mongerer”. Those wild facts others daren’t even approach only he can tame, in the service of Mother Nature herself.
In climate change there is no equality between fear mongering and fact mongering in terms of public policy or scientific method.
Fear mongering is usually about scary stories of potential doom based of future scenarios to promote policy. Most often is to promote policies to cut carbon emissions, rather than to adapt to the changed climate. Others are promoting useless and costly policies based on nothing more than false prophesies.
One of Roger Pielke Jnr’s sins appears in monitoring potential worsening catastrophic impacts and finding the data shows otherwise. Most notably it is monitoring trends in hurricanes and tornadoes. One piece of fact mongering is to look at the costs of hurricanes after allowing for inflation, increase in population and increase in wealth. Another is to look at the death rates due to natural disasters.
A major sin of Bjorn Lomborg is to look at the greatest possible good that can be done with a finite quantity of resources. Using this basis financing NGOs and Government officials to go to the mass COP conferences that only produce a lot of hot air, comes well down the list of priorities. Much better would be for expert climate scientists to help better identify the type, timing, location and magnitude of catastrophic climate change. People (whether individuals, families, local groups or governments) can therefore use this information to better adapt to changed circumstances, and avoid needless costs based on fake alarmism.
Hence the lack of equality between fear mongering and fact mongering. Fear mongering will lead to undue panic and waste of scarce resources on ineffectual and (possibly) harmful policies. Fact mongering (otherwise known as objective assessment of the evidence) will help promote measured and optimal responses. A bit like the medical profession when treating patients, the “fact mongers” seek to maximize the treatment/po;icy effectiveness, whilst minimizing the pain/costs and the risks of adverse side effects.
“…scary stories of potential doom…”
Generally, the ‘potential’ is represented as being realised without dramatic and swift action. About 180 such stories, by narrative category and quoting authority (including many of the highest / most influential authorities there are), with context notes, here: https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/footnotes1.pdf
Nobody could accuse Zeke Hausfather et al of fact mongering on ‘record’ ocean heat content during 2018.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/01/11/a-small-margin-of-error/
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2019/01/11/scare-of-the-day-ocean-heat-content/
Andy West
Thanks for the very long list of calls for dramatic and swift action. Scanning through it these calls are from scientists and politicians from a number of different countries. But am I right in saying that there is an extreme Western bias here? That is very few voices are from China, India, other parts of SE Asia, or the Arab world?
The reason I ask is that the scaremongering is mostly directed at policy to stop the rise in the atmospheric levels of trace gases. That requires reducing global greenhouse emissions. Annual COP meetings since 1995 have failed to achieve this. Even when scaremongering is presented on a global stage – the most recent being the IPCC SR1.5 – has failed to significantly reduce the gap between projected and desired emission pathways. Given that emissions reduction strategies are hugely costly the scare mongering is to impose burdens on people without reducing the prospective harms. Like a lot of historical scaremongers, climate alarmists arbitrarily dismiss normal checks and balances on a pretense whilst ignoring the great harms that their actions will cause.
I’m not sure that any of these accusations and counter-accusations of who is selling what is driving the debate forward very much. Irrespective of the blog you visit, you will find it to be an emporium selling plenty of fear, facts and, to a greater or lesser extent, doubt (plus something under the counter for its special customers). The only outlet I would steer clear of is ‘Certitudes-R-Us’.
An Evening out ( I might go) in Oxford?
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/councils-leading-in-the-climate-emergency-tickets-54372386271
I suspect Extinction Rebellion et al may be fact lite, or even fear mongering..
“But am I right in saying that there is an extreme Western bias here?”
I can’t tell for sure, because there’s definitely a significant bias caused by the fact that I was searching only in English. So outside of English speaking countries this only picks up stuff that is considered high profile enough to get translated, for whatever reason. And quotes from Merkel say or even some Scandinavian Minister or whatever, are I guess more likely to get translated than say stuff from say Indonesian or Arab leaders, although one would expect more translation from China given its weight in the world nowadays. There is stuff in translation (e.g. in UN annals) as well as much more in English too, that is milder narrative though, which helps give a feel, and I think that despite the English only window here, there is indeed a bias of catastrophe narrative from the West. I’ve generally attributed this to the fact that the West has been much more well-off than the areas you list, and still is albeit to a lesser extent. Folks can probably only worry about this issue if you can actually afford not to worry about a host of more immediate issues. But maybe the bias wouldn’t look as extreme if you searched in all languages; considering the financial benefits some of the developing areas are likely to receive, one would expect this to encourage some emotive leadership calls for action that may also invoke catastrophe, as can be seen in English from leaders of some of the small island nations.
sycomputing says:
” . . . a third-rate institution called University of North Texas.”
Hrumph!
For Philosophy such is perhaps true, however, I attended that institution for it’s music program, hence, I’ll have you know from experience such a criticism isn’t true when it comes to Jazz!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_O%27Clock_Lab_Band
Yes, NTU is well known for excellent music, nursing and teaching programs.
It is the true gem of Denton, Tx, lol.
The gem losses it’s luster when anti-intellectual academics push the idea that “fact mongering” is a problem and not the goal.
…..My bad!
UNT, not NTU!!
Sorry. The gem of Denton deserves proper respect.
That’ll be “NTSU” to you, sir!
Or so it was when I attended there . . .
Pingback: Pielke and Lomborg accused of “fact mongering” | Watts Up With That?
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Sy, sorry, I had not heard of it so I looked it up on a couple of lists of the top 100 US unis and it didn’t appear.
Jaap Titulaer says:
“Adam Briggle, a philosopher at a third-rate institution called University of North Texas”
A non-scientist from some institution which wouldn’t even be called a ‘university’ in the EU, has problems with people with actual relevant degrees from actual universities (from the top 100 in the world) because they state some simple facts? Inconvenient truths indeed.
Oh no worries . . . just horsing around a little bit. Honestly, I was only there for a semester, after which I retired to take what I learned and become a rock and roll star. Since that never panned out, you must’ve been right all along.
XR as fact-lite fear-mongers, Barry? Absolutely not. They have lots of facts. Eg:
‘97% of climate scientists agree that climate change presents a serious threat to our civilisation and quite possibly our survival as a species.’
‘Based on the science, we have ten years at the most to reduce CO2 emissions to zero, or the human race and most other species are at high risk of extinction within decades.’
Climate change will cause mass starvation within ten years.
The End-Permian Mass Extinction was caused by something called ‘nitrate sulphide’.
Basic maths and basic science tell us that something called ‘juropedence’ means that the British government is to the right of Hitler because it is deliberately planning to gas not just 6 million people but the entire human race.
With Luck, this event in London on Tuesday…
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/psychedelics-extinction-and-social-change-tickets-52972533273
…will see a mongering of facts about XR’s genesis at an ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica.
Yes, NTSU it is.
Of course their philosopher prince may single handedly get the school’s accreditation pulled, so the acronym could be shrunk or changed….
Well no, it isn’t any longer actually . . . hasn’t been since 1988 when it was changed to it’s current, “University of North Texas,” or, “UNT.” Hence my, “when I attended there,” caveat.
Hmmm . . . I’ve just come along and made a confusing mess for a couple of silly little jokes haven’t I? If only I could do that as well as Brad! But since I am not able, I’ll just say my apologies and be running along now!
JimBob1028 says:
US Representative A. Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Adam Briggles’ Deep Thoughts on RRR when she said, “There’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.”
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September 2020 New Music Releases
Aleia Woods
Never Broke Again, LLC / Atlantic Records / Getting Out Our Dreams, Inc. / Def Jam Records / Scott Dudelson, Getty Images
As quick as summer came, its already on its way out, but that doesn't mean hip-hop is putting their mics down because the season is changing. Not only is fall approaching, but the country is entering month seven of a global pandemic. Nonetheless, it looks like a lot of rappers have been in the studio more now than ever and its evident with the back to back releases that are being delivered weekly and monthly.
In August, DaBaby dropped off a deluxe version to Blame It on Baby, NLE Choppa offered his debut studio album, Top Shotta, and Nas gave some veteran bars with new school production from Hit-Boy on King's Disease. So, as we transition into September, be on the lookout for some new music from some of your favorite rappers by way of mixtapes, EPs, albums and projects, which can be found below.
Big Sean is kicking off the month with the follow-up to his 2012 mixtape, Detroit. About two weeks ahead of the Sept. 4 release of the LP, Detroit 2, Sean Don teased what fans can expect from the album with a collaborative effort featuring the late Nipsey Hussle called "Deep Reverence." The Detroit native's fifth album will be co-executive produced by beatmaker Hit-Boy, who's also responsible for the production on "Deep Reverence" alongside G. Ry and G.O.O.D. Music founder Kanye West. The effort, which will likely feature Sean's signature introspective bars, is his first album in three years. Prior to the second installment of the series named after his hometown, Big Sean dropped his platinum-selling album I Decided in 2017.
YoungBoy Never Broke Again announced at the end of April that he'd be taking a break from music after delivering 38 Baby 2. Looks like NBA's hiatus has come to an end because he's dropping his album Top on Sept. 11. The Baton Rouge, La. rapper revealed the album title and artwork last week and was quickly accused by fans of ripping off Roddy Ricch's cover art for his 2019 release, Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial. Despite the negativity and a social media spat with Fredo Bang regarding the two both dropping albums on the same day (Fredo's album is no longer out on Sept. 11), the southern, melodic rapper, known for his aggressive cadence, is back after taking a slight break from the rap game.
2 Chainz is also delivering some new heat in September. Following his 2019 album, Rap or Go to the League, the ATL native is releasing So Help Me God at the end of the month on Sept. 25. He announced the project via Instagram in early August. While the tracklist and number of songs haven't been revealed yet, Tity Boi has offered a track with Lil Wayne called "Money Maker." He first teased the song during his Verzuz battle against Rick Ross and it could possibly appear on the LP. There's also a chance that the record could be on ColleGrove 2, which is Chainz and Weezy's forthcoming joint effort. Regardless, the streets are ready and waiting.
Check out all the new projects dropping in September below.
See September 2020 New Music Releases
Source: September 2020 New Music Releases
Filed Under: 2 Chainz, 6ix9ine, action bronson, Berner, Big Sean, conway the machine, Curren$y, Dee-1, Dizzy Wright, eiht, Elzhi, Fredo Bang, Galleries, Gallery, Gashi, Grafh, h1ghr music, Harry Fraud, Jay Park, Joyner Lucas, Krizz Kaliko, Lil Peep, Lil Tecca, MBNel, mc eiht, mozzy, Murs, Nappy Roots, Problem, Shy Glizzy, skippa da flippa, Spillage Village, Toosii, Vritra, YoungBoy Never Broke Again
Liam Neeson Is Ready to Play Qui-Gon in the ‘Obi-Wan’ Series
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The Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia
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WIRA 2021
Discovery – CEO News
As a year unlike any other draws to a close, I’d thank to thank our member companies and their workforces for all the hard work that has gone into keeping our sector operating in a safe and effective manner.
This time last year, nobody could have foreseen the COVID-19 pandemic and the devastating consequences it would have around the world from both a health and economic perspective.
It’s testament to the resilience, innovation and commitment to excellence of CME members and their employees that our sector has been able to perform as strongly as it has in 2020, making invaluable contributions to the WA and Federal economies.
I’d also like to acknowledge the efforts of the CME team, who have been tireless this year in their efforts to advocate for key outcomes for our members, to keep the membership informed of the latest developments in a continually evolving environment and to communicate to the wider public the important work our sector has been doing. Against the backdrop of COVID-19, there have been several major pieces of legislation progressing at both State and Federal levels and the CME team’s work in relation to these has been exemplary.
The evolving situation around the current NSW outbreak shows that COVID-19 continues to be a key concern for our sector. The latest advice about NSW is available here.
The festive period will hopefully give many of us a chance to recharge our batteries but the conclusion to 2020 has been extremely busy.
The Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia released an interim report last week following the events at Juukan Gorge in May. While we acknowledge the committee’s work and the opportunity provided for CME and member companies to provide submissions, we remain steadfast in our view that the WA Government should be the primary regulator for matters of Aboriginal cultural heritage through the modernisation of WA’s Aboriginal Heritage Act. We have also made it clear that any proposed moratorium on Section 18 notices under the existing Act would have major adverse impacts on major projects around the State – many of which are unrelated to mining.
On another matter, I’m delighted that the finalists for our Women In Resources Awards (WIRA) have now been announced – you can read more on that in the Featured section of this newsletter. WIRA is always a highlight of the mining and resources sector’s social calendar and next year’s event promises to be the best yet.
Finally, it was extremely heartening to learn this week of a revised WA Government forecast operating surplus of more than $2 billion and also national data which suggests employment in the State now exceeds pre-COVID levels. When you consider the conditions in other parts of the world, that’s an extremely fortunate position for WA to be in and I’m extremely proud of our sector’s contribution to that.
I’d like to take this opportunity to wish the entire mining and resources sector a safe and happy Christmas and New Year. I look forward to working with you all again in 2021.
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Personal Self Development
Misha Maruma
Xuemeng, 2018
Personal development is tough. It’s a struggle and also a challenge. It’s hard to push yourself to achieve new goals and to constantly find ways to better yourself. Nonetheless, there wouldn’t be any growth without challenge. That’s what life is all about.
Yolanda Y. Liou is up for the challenge, it seems. Over the past few years, the Taiwanese artist has built a career as a commercial photographer, her work appearing in publications from GQ to Grazia. She has collected some awards along the way too, including Editors Pick at the 2018 Lens Culture B&W Awards and Honourable Mention in the 2019 Creative Review Photography Annual.
However, her ongoing series The Self-Developed Project is where we can see Liou’s true artistic expression. “I’m interested in inviting imperfection and unpredictability into the image-making process, allowing the materiality of the film to coexist with the photographic image,” is how she summarises the project.
Daisy, 2019
Carlos, 2019
Akti, 2019
The 2019 award from Creative Review is for her series Thank You for Playing with Me, a project she did with Plus-size model Enam Asiama and Vanessa Russell that was first shown at Neo Hua Ren exhibition in August 2019. Where does this personal project fit in with her most recent fine art portraiture? “I normally try more random things while shooting for self-developing,” explains Liou, which goes a long way to helping understand The Self-Developed Project.
Liou uses a Pentax 35mm film camera for these photographs and self-processes the black and white analogue film herself, in her bathroom of all places. She also deliberately soaks the film rolls in various fluids causing the film material to degrade, which allows part of the captured image to endure and bleed through the decay. “It’s all part of the experiment,” she says, “and it’s a good way of discovering new perspectives and learning controlled accidents on my personal approach of making photography.”
The series encompasses fashion shoot style shots, for example, but with a model’s face covered by her hair. There are also shots where a model’s face is overexposed; the series takes in a range of varied notions, all within the theme of portraiture.
Lola Liou, 2019
Tin, 2018
Liza, 2018
Ava, 2018
There are double exposures and almost totally white negatives with only a glimpse of a model’s features, flowing hair the focal point of the image. Another similar photo exposes just the body of a model, her pose clear in only her underwear but her head totally white from overexposure.
Some of the images have an airy quality caused by the fluids that have degraded the film, resulting in a halo effect hovering over a model. It all adds to the sense of experimentation in the series, creating something completely different from Liou’s regular commercial shoots.
I’m interested in inviting imperfection and unpredictability into the image-making process, allowing the materiality of the film to coexist with the photographic image
Her use of shadow throughout the whole series is exquisite, complementing the black and white range against the experimentalism of the photos as a whole. The use of overexposure is also another really important part of the series, especially on some of the images where the film has clearly significantly degraded.
Liou’s use of a variety of models adds to the depth and richness of the series. Being a commercial photographer, it would be easy to just use an image of ‘standard’ beauty but Liou uses models that add relevance; all races, ethnicities and genders are represented, which makes the photos feel contemporary and the avant-garde nature of the method gives the whole series impact.
Shine, 2019
Suan, 2018
Some of the photos have the quality of wet plate collodion process; where the film has degraded it leaves the appearance of an archaic form, but it also alters the reference of the models to make it look as if they too are in the nineteenth-century.
There is one photo that doesn’t feature any models. It resembles something from twentieth-century Cambodia a few years after Year Zero of Pol Pot’s heinous regime. The image of skulls alone isn’t so striking, rather it’s the degraded film and antiquated quality of the final image that reveals Liou’s skills to be more than just capturing a person in a beautiful composition. This particular photo represents how Liou has used this series to show what she can do as an artist and not just a photographer.
Lawrence, 2019
For more information about Yolanda Y. Liou please contact us directly.
Yolanda Y. Liou
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The year in exclusives: just some of the 2017 stories you will know only if you read Cornwall Reports
Posted By theboss on 1st January 2018
Here are just some of the reasons why you really should subscribe to Cornwall Reports
HEALTH: The inside story of how Kennally Care is taking over from the NHS
Today’s exclusive story about Cornwall’s Accountable Care Organisation is just one of several to chart the unfolding narrative of how Cornwall is due to exit the National Health Service on 1st April. This description of what is happening is hotly denied by those responsible, but the facts strongly support the charge.
For more than 12 months Cornwall Reports has been publishing confidential details of how Cornwall Council is to take over the NHS, and is already preparing for much greater privatisation. The original source documents, many obtained after months of dogged pursuit through Freedom of Information laws, are all on the Cornwall Reports website.
HEALTH (again): Cornwall’s new out-of-hours GP contract changed hands, with no public consultation, just weeks before it was due to start. The “inadequate” company which had been due to run Cornwall’s urgent out-of-hours GP service next month has been taken over by another private firm. The Somerset-based company Vocare, which had been part of a consortium including the Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust and Kernow Health, has been bought by Totally PLC in a deal worth £14.4 million.
HEALTH (again): Launceston hospital land – the restrictive covenant not mentioned by the auctioneers. The low price sought by NHS Property Services for the sale of land next to Launceston hospital might be explained by a restrictive covenant, which ruled out the use of the land for anything other than a hospital - and which appeared to be largely unknown outside of Launceston, until published by Cornwall Reports.
VOLUNTARY SECTOR: Cornwall’s Citizens Advice will live to fight another day, afters council leaders realised they don’t have enough votes to force through all of their planned cuts. Cornwall’s Citizens Advice will not have to close seven of its nine offices next year, as the ruling Liberal Democrat-Independent administration wobbles over a proposed 53% cut to the charity’s annual grant. The first rule of politics is to be able to count. The cabinet appeared not to notice that it did not have enough votes to force this budget cut through a full council meeting.
EUROPE: Do you remember Cornwall’s doomed Capital of Culture bid? Cornwall Reports was first to break the story and developed several new angles – such as the revelation that five out of six SW Euro MPs, including both UKIP members, backed the culture gamble.
70 years after Nye Bevan founded the National Health Service, Cornwall's 2015 "Devolution Deal" finally delivers "Kennally Care" from 1st April, with Cornwall Council chief executive Kate Kennally in overall charge of commissioning health services West of the River Tamar. Scary but true: readers of Cornwall Reports know much more about this than most of Cornwall's elected politicians.
TRANSPORT: The prospect of commuter train services returning between Bodmin General and the mainline Bodmin Parkway station was effectively derailed by a confidential feasibility study, obtained and published by Cornwall Reports.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT: Probably more meetings have been held, and more words spoken, about how many councillors it takes to run County Hall than any other single story. Cornwall Reports exclusive analysis of official data revealed which councillors are most likely to get the chop.
EDUCATION: How Falmouth University spent nearly £1 million to say goodbye to its top academics, swapping arts for Asset Finance
BUSINESS: What’s going on at Corserv? Trouble at the top, still unresolved, was detailed just days before the council debated a £70 million increase in its capital budget. The story raised new questions about the viability of the budget – and Corserv still has no accepted business plan.
POLITICS: Exclusive analysis of who-spent-what in Cornwall’s general election, revealing which candidates were best value for money
Plus, of course, much much more.
New subscribers who apply before Saturday 6th January can get Cornwall Reports for a year at half price – which works out at about 4 pence per day. Just hit the “subscribe” button on the front page, fill in the details, using the discount voucher code “2018” and then complete the transaction on a secure payment page, using any credit/debit card or PayPal. Offer ends at midnight on Friday 5th January.
Everything you ever wanted to know about the immediate future of Cornwall's health service, but were afraid to ask
Regular readers of Cornwall Reports will know that for more than a year, a revolution…
"Accountable" Care comes out of the shadows and dances on the lawns of County Hall, as health chiefs prepare for shotgun wedding
14th December 2017By Graham SmithCornwall Council’s NHS “charm offensive” in the battle for hearts and…
EXCLUSIVE: A Health Commissioner, outside of the NHS - just one of the ideas floating around Cornwall's STP as private firms design the future
19th August 2017By Graham SmithCornwall Reports has obtained a copy of the first private-sector assessment…
EXCLUSIVE: Council signs the deal and takes charge of health, setting up “Kennally Care” before even the first question is asked
16th December 2017By Graham SmithThe deal is done and the contract signedCommunity hospitals at riskCornwall’s…
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Watch the live broadcast
Opinion: Mannkind In Trouble
by Cougar News Staff March 8, 2011 6:17 pm 1,143 views1
In a world filled with disease and sickness, modern medicine is quickly becoming a way of control, rather than a cure.
I mean, we’ve all heard of the crazy side affects that come along with these so called “medical breakthroughs”; from constipation to loss of vision, internal bleeding to liver damage, depression and even the risk of DEATH has not been enough to keep these money hungry medical developers from making a quick buck. But when a company that actually is working for the greater good comes up with a product, the FDA wants to make them jump through fire hoops to get it put into production.
In mid February, the Valencia based biotechnology company Mannkind was forced cut approximately 41% of its workforce in an attempt to recover from huge setbacks in regards to its latest product ‘Afrezza’. The small inhaler like mechanism is supposed to deliver controlled amounts of insulin to patients with type 1 and type II diabetes making it a more convenient and less painful alternative to injecting insulin directly into the bloodstream by use of needles.
Apparently the FDA would rather people suffocate on their own bodily fluid trying to cure erectile dysfunction, rather than allowing a product like this to actually help people that need it.
After a decision made by the Food and Drug Administration rejecting the experimental device Afrezza, over 175 researchers and factory workers at the small company MannKind were forced to pack their bags, only adding to the amount of people without jobs in America. The FDA claimed they needed more evidence which could compare the device to older versions of the prototyped product.
Doesn’t it make you feel better knowing that grandpa and grandma can stay sexually active, but the old lady in the hospital bed with veins the size of a DNA strand has no way of getting her insulin anymore?
The FDA’s motto is “Protecting and Promoting Your Health”… Really? So were supposed to believe the same company that approves cigarettes and is forced year after year to recall products its approved is “Protecting” us. Honestly, the FDA doesn’t care about us, but if you happen to have the money, the FDA has no problem “Promoting” your product. But I digress.
Companies like MannKind Corp that are actually developing drugs that are beneficial to the future of American medicine need the chance to develop its products. But, since it’s up to the FDA, everyone make sure you have your will’s prepared and all your family issues in order, and be sure to “use as directed, and take at your own risk.”
Cougar News Staff
COC Softball and Baseball Start Swinging For Conference
The Patios at Town Center Mall Ready to Roll
Academy of the Canyons: an explainer
by Valeria Vazquez - July 31, 2019 12:00 pm
The (un)Friendly Ghost: an examination into the recent phenomenon of “ghosting”
by Praditya Fulumirani - July 17, 2019 8:00 am
Transfer students scared after college admissions scandal
by Cougar News Contributor - July 3, 2019 12:00 pm
Possible Pride center for LGBTQIA+ community in the works at COC
by Cougar News Contributor - June 26, 2019 12:00 pm
Turner_s15 April 5, 2011 at 2:52 am
I feel that if given a chance affrezza could skyrocket… why the hell does the fda do this crap?
Cougar News Online © 2017. All Rights Reserved
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Test of Controls: When to Perform and How
By Charles Hall | Auditing
A test of controls is a response to the risk a material misstatement. Today, I tell you when to use this response and how.
Three Responses to the Risk of Material Misstatement
The audit standards provide three potential responses (further audit procedures) to the risk of material misstatement:
Test of details
Substantive analytical procedures
Test of controls
Today we look at the third option.
Why Test Controls?
Which response to a risk of material misstatement (RMM) is best? That depends on what you discover in risk assessment.
If, for example, your client consistently fails to record payables, then assess the completeness assertion for control risk at high. Your response? Perform a search for unrecorded liabilities, a test of details.
Alternatively, if controls for receivables are strong, you can assess the existence assertion for control risk at less than high and test controls. If the test proves the controls are effective, you can perform fewer substantive tests, such as a search for unrecorded liabilities.
Assessing Control Risk at High
Many auditors assess control risk at high (after risk assessment is complete) and use a fully substantive approach. That is fine, especially in audits of smaller entities. Why? Because smaller entities tend to have weaker controls. As a result, controls may not be effective. And you may not be able to assess control risk at less than high. (Nevertheless, most entities do have some controls that are effective.)
Assessing Control Risk at Less Than High
Control risk assessments of less than high must be supported with a test of controls. Why? To prove effectiveness. But if controls are not effective, you must assess control risk at high. This is why you might bypass control testing. You know, either from prior experience or from current-year walkthroughs, that controls are not effective. And if you test controls and find they are ineffective, you are back to square one: a control risk assessment of high. And now you must respond with either a test of details or substantive analytics, or a combination of the two. Testing ineffective controls is a waste of time.
Nevertheless, if controls are effective, why not test them? Doing so allows you to reduce your substantive procedures (test of details or substantive analytics).
Once risk assessment is complete, the decision regarding responses (further audit procedures) is largely based on efficiency. If control testing takes less time, then test controls. If substantive procedures takes less time, then perform a test of details or use a substantive analytical approach. But, regardless of efficiency considerations, address all risks with appropriate responses.
Next, we’ll assume that controls are anticipated to be effective. And we’ll look at how to test controls.
How to Test Controls
So you’ve decided to test controls for effectiveness. But how? Let’s look at an example starting with risk assessment.
Control Risk Assessment
Your approach to testing controls depends on risk identified during risk assessment. For example, your walkthrough reveals appropriate segregation of duties. And you also see that the client issues receipts for each payment. Additionally, total daily cash inflows are reconciled to the bank statement. In other words, controls are designed properly and they have been implemented. Also, as an example, you’ve determined completeness is a relevant assertion. Why? Theft is a concern.
Control Test Supports Effectiveness
Now, it’s time to test for effectiveness. You’ve already determined segregation of duties is present. If necessary, make additional observations regarding who is doing what. And document those observations. If the client has an accounting handbook, see if there were any amendments to the control system during the period being audited. Why? You want to know if the segregation of duties was present throughout the year. Make additional inquires, if needed.
Additionally, re-perform the receipt controls on a sample basis. But before doing so, determine the controls you are testing and the sample size. For example, your sample size might be 60 receipts and the control being tested is the issuance of a receipt by an authorized person. Additionally, you might sample 25 daily reconciliations to the bank statement. Document this information including how you determined your sample sizes. Now perform your tests and document whether the controls are effective. If yes, leave your control risk at less than high. You have support for that lower risk assessment. Additionally, you can now perform fewer substantive tests.
Test Doesn’t Support Effectiveness
If your test does not support effectiveness, expand your sample size and test additional receipts. Or you can punt on the testing controlsand move to a substantive approach. Regardless, if controls are not effective, consider the need to communicate the control deficiency.
So, when should you test controls?
When to Test Controls
Here are two situations where you are required to test controls:
When there is a significant risk and you are placing reliance on controls related to that risk
When substantive procedures don’t properly address a risk of material misstatement
Allow me to explain.
Required Test of Controls
Auditing standards allow a three-year rotation for testing controls, as long as the area tested is not a significant risk. But if the auditor plans to rely on a test of controls related to a significant risk, operating effectiveness must be tested in the current period. Additionally, the auditor should perform substantive procedures responsive to the significant risk. And those substantive procedures must include a test of details.
Also a test of controls is necessary if substantive procedures don’t properly address a risk of material misstatement. For example, consider the controls related to reallocation of investments in a 401(k). The participant goes online and moves funds from one account to another. There are no humans involved in the process, other than the participant. When processes are fully automated, substantive procedures may not provide sufficient audit evidence. If that is your situation, you must test of controls. Thankfully, a type 2 service organization control report is usually available in audits of 401(k)s. Such a report provides evidence that controls have already been tested by the service organization’s auditor. And you can leverage (place reliance upon) those tests.
Three Year Rotation
As I said earlier, audit standards allow a three-year rotation for testing effectiveness. For example, if you test accounts payable controls in 2020, then you can wait until 2023 to test them again. In 2021 and 2022, you need to ensure that these controls have not changed. You also want to determine that those controls have continuing relevance in the current audit. How? See if the controls continue to address a risk of material misstatement. And as you perform your annual walkthroughs, inquire about changes, observe the controls, and inspect documents. Why? You want to know that everything is working as before. And, yes, you do need to perform those walkthroughs annually, if that is how you corroborate your understanding of controls.
In short, testing for effectiveness can occur every three years, in most cases. But risk assessment procedures (e.g., walkthroughs) must be performed annually.
So should tests occur at interim or after year-end?
Interim or Year-End Tests
Some auditors test after the period has ended. Others at interim. Which should you choose?
If it fits better into your work schedule, perform interim test of controls. Here’s an example: You perform an interim test of controls on November 1, 2019. Later, say in February 2020, consider whether controls have changed during the last two months of the year. See if the same people are performing those controls. And consider performing an additional tests of controls for the November 1 to December 31 period. Once done, determine if the controls are effective.
But testing on an interim date is not always the answer. For example, if management is inclined to manipulate earnings near year-end, then interim tests may not be appropriate.
If you choose to test after year-end, then you’ll examine controls for the full period being audited. Your sample should be representative of that timeframe.
So should you ever test at a point in time and not over a period of time? Yes, sometimes. For example, you might test inventory count controls at year-end.
When auditors perform Single Audits, there is often confusion about testing internal controls. The requirements are different. So let’s take a look.
Single Audit Test of Controls
Perform a test of controls in Single Audits, but don’t confuse this test with those discussed above. The guidance above is in regard to generally accepted auditing standards (GAAS). The Single Audit is another set of standards and has different requirements. In Single Audits, you plan the audit with a low control risk assessment and you test for effectiveness. (One exception: when controls are not present. Then report the control deficiency in the Single Audit report.) The efficiency decision permitted in GAAS (see above) is not in play for your Single Audit work.
The types of controls you are testing in a Single Audit are also different. Here you test controls related to compliance requirements such as allowability, eligibility, procurement, and reporting. Perform such tests for each major program compliance requirement that is direct and material. The compliance requirements are specified in the OMB Compliance Supplement. See parts 2 (Matrix of Compliance Requirements) and 3 (Compliance Requirements).
Well, can you see why testing controls is confusing? There’s a lot to think about.
As I said above, many auditors tend to rely fully on substantive responses to the risks of material misstatement. But, in some cases, that may not be the best or wisest approach. If controls are designed well and functioning, why not test them? Especially if it takes less time than substantive procedures.
Finally, take a look at my two related articles regarding responses to the risk of material misstatement: (1) Test of Details: Substantive Procedures and (2) Substantive Analytics: Smart Audit Procedures.
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Written by creativestrategies May 25, 2010
Washington University Receives $60 Million Gift
Washington University in St. Louis has announced a $60 million gift from university vice chair and life trustee John McDonnell and his family’s JSM Charitable Trust.
The largest portion of the gift — $48 million — will be used to create and endow the McDonnell Academic Excellence Fund, an unrestricted fund that the university can use to respond to new academic opportunities, launch initiatives that build on its strengths, and maximize its impact on the world. Income generated from the fund could be used for a range of one-time needs, including faculty appointments, new construction and building renovations, scholarship and fellowship support, and new programs. At the chancellor’s discretion, income from the fund can also be used to build other university endowments over time.
Another $10 million will support the McDonnell International Scholars Academy, a global network of partner universities established in 2005 to enable scholars from those institutions to earn a graduate degree and experience broad leadership exposure at the school. In addition, a $2 million challenge grant will be used to encourage new and expanded annual scholarships as part of the university’s Opening Doors to the Future campaign.
“This is a remarkable gift, and it will have a real impact in advancing Washington University’s strategic plan for excellence,” said university chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. “I am very grateful to John McDonnell and the JSM Charitable Trust’s directors for their foresight and extraordinary generosity. I am particularly thankful to them for establishing the McDonnell Academic Excellence Fund, which will provide flexibility and generate much-needed resources in perpetuity.”
“John McDonnell, JSM Charitable Trust Give $60 Million to WUSTL.” Washington University Press Release 5/21/10.
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Home > Cisco to Pay Catellus $101.9 Mln for Space in California
Cisco to Pay Catellus $101.9 Mln for Space in California
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Tags: Office California - CA Leases (LSE) Between $100 million and $150 million
Girls Scouts Look to Terminate Lease at Manhattan’s 40 Wall St.
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Philadelphia Business Journal Amazoncom Inc has signed a lease for 94,000 square feet at 700 Ramona Ave in Philadelphia The online retail giant will use the vacant building as a distribution facility Last year, Amazon inked leases for more than 3...
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Dallas CityBizList Bioworld Merchandising has signed a lease for 123,844 square feet of industrial space in the Dallas suburb of Irving, Texas The global manufacturer and distributor of licensed apparel and accessories, is leasing the space at TCC...
Cushman & Wakefield Subleasing Space in Manhattan, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Commercial Observer Cushman & Wakefield plans on subleasing the 10,000 square feet of space it occupies at One World Trade Center in lower Manhattan and the 15,000 sf it leases at One Pierrepont Plaza in downtown Brooklyn, NY The brokerage plans...
Microsoft to Lease 180,000 SF in Arlington, Va.
Commercial Observer Microsoft Corp has signed a lease for 180,000 square feet at the Commonwealth Tower office building in Arlington, Va The tech giant plans to occupy its space by the middle of next year Tishman Speyer Properties owns the...
Southwestern Health Resources to Relocate Dallas-Area HQs
Dallas Business Journal Southwestern Health Resources is relocating its headquarters to Farmers Branch, Texas The Dallas-based organization, an integrated health network between the UT Southwestern Medical Center and Texas Health Resources systems,...
New York Plans Extension of Eviction Moratorium
Crain’s New York Business Legislators in New York State have approved the Emergency Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2020, which restricts evictions and foreclosures until May 1 The bill is expected to be signed by the state’s...
Law Firm Offers 100,300 SF for Sublease in Washington, D.C.
Washington Business Journal Hogan Lovells LLP is offering for sublease 100,300 square feet at Columbia Square, a 601,003-sf office building in Washington, DC The law firm has hired Savills to market the space, which will be available from June 2021...
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Marc Snir
Research Professor & Michael Faiman Professor Emeritus
snir@illinois.edu
Marc Snir's home page
Ph.D., Hebrew University of Jerusalem (supervisor, Professor Eli Shamir), 1979
2007-2012, Lead Architect, Blue Waters system software, NCSA
2007-2011, Co-director, UPCRC
2007-2011, Professor (0%), Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at U-C
2001-present, Michael Faiman Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at U-C
Books Authored or Co-Authored (Original Editions)
William Gropp, Steven Huss-Lederman, Andrew Lumsdaine, Ewing Lusk, Bill Nitzberg, William Saphir, and Marc Snir, MPI--The Complete Reference. Volume 2 - The MPI-2 Extensions. The MIT Press 1998.
Marc Snir, Steve Otto, Steve Huss-Lederman, David Walker, and Jack Dongarra, MPI--The Complete Reference. Volume 1 - The MPI-1 Core . The MIT Press, 1996.
Books Authored or Co-Authored (Revisions)
Marc Snir, Steve Otto, Steve Huss-Lederman, David Walker, and Jack Dongarra, MPI--The Complete Reference. Volume 1 - The MPI-1 Core, 2nd edition. The MIT Press, 1998.
Books Edited or Co-Edited (Original Editions)
Susan L. Graham, Marc Snir and Cynthia A. Patterson (Editors), Getting up to Speed -- The Future of Supercomputing., National Academies Press, 11/2004 (227 pages).
Chapters in Books
Peter Corbett, Dror Feitelson, Sam Fineberg, Yarsun Hsu, Bill Nitzberg, Jean-Pierre Prost, Marc Snir, Bernard Traversat, and Parkson Wong, "Overview of the MPI-IO Parallel I/O Interface." In High Performance Mass Storage and Parallel I/O: Technologies and Applications, Rajkumar Buyya, Hai Jin and Toni Cortes (eds.) Wiley, November 2001, 477-487.
Gottlieb, R. Grishman, C.K. Kruskal, K.P. McAuliffe, L. Rudolph, and M. Snir, "The NYU Ultracomputer - Designing a MIMD, shared-memory parallel machine." IEEE 9th Ann. Int. Symp. on Computer Architecture, 1982. Reprinted in 25 years of the international symposia on Computer architecture (selected papers), 1998, Pages 239-254.
P. Corbett, D. Feitelson, S. Fineberg, Y. Hsu, J.-P. Prost, M. Snir, B. Traversat and P. Wong, "Overview of the MPI-IO parallel I/O interface." In Input/Output in Parallel and Distributed Computer Systems, R. Jain J. Werth and J. C. Browne (eds.) Kluwer, June 1996, 127-146.
T. Agerwala, J. Mirza and M. Snir, "Designing a scalable parallel system: the IBM SP2." in High Performance Computing: Technology, Methods and Applications, J. Dongarra, L. Grandinetti, G. Joubert and J. Kowalik (eds.). Advances in Parallel Computing Series, Vol. 10, Elsevier, Amsterdam 1995.
C. Kruskal and M. Snir, "Optimal interconnection networks of parallel processors: The importance of being square." In Distributed Computing and Computer Communications, Yehiam Yemini Information Processing Letters, 22 (1986), 97-102.
Gottlieb, R. Grishman, C.K. Kruskal, K.P. McAuliffe, L. Rudolph, and M. Snir, "The NYU Ultracomputer - Designing a MIMD, shared-memory parallel computer." IEEE Trans. on Computers C-32 (1983), 175-189. Republished in Kai Hwang and Bob Kung (eds.), Supercomputers: Design and Applications, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1984 and in D.D. Gajski, V.M. Milutinovic, H.J. Siegel, and B.P. Furth (eds.), Tutorial - Computer Architecture, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1987.
Bryan Catanzaro, Armando Fox, Kurt Keutzer, David Patterson, Bor-Yiing Su, Marc Snir, Kunle Olokotum, Pat Hanrahan and Hassan Chafi, Ubiquitous Parallel Computing from Berkeley, Illinois and Stanford. IEEE MIcro 3(4), March/April 2010, 41-45
Bill Gropp and Marc Snir, On the Need for a Consortium of Capability Centers , The International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications Volume 23 Issue 4, October 2009
N. V. Sahinidis, M.T. Harandi, M.T. Heath, L. Murphy, M. Snir, R.P. Wheeler and C.F. Zukoski, "Establishing a master's degree programme in Bioinformatics: challenges and opportunities." IEE Proceedings Systems Biology, 152(4), 269-275, 2005.
Marc Snir and David A. Bader, "A framework for measuring supercomputer productivity." International Journal for High Performance Computing Applications, 2004 18: 399-416.
Marc Snir, "A note on n-body computations with cutoffs." Theory of Computing Systems 37, 295-318, 2004.
Almasi, G.S.; Cascaval, C.; Castanos, J.G.; Denneau, M.; Donath, W.; Eleftheriou, M.; Giampapa, M.; Ho, H.; Lieber, D.; Moreira, J.E.; Newns, D.; Snir, M.; Warren, H.S., Jr., "Demonstrating the scalability of a molecular dynamics application on a Petaflops computer." International Journal of Parallel Programming, 30(4):317-351, 2002
F. Allen et al, "Blue Gene: a vision for protein science using a petaflop supercomputer." IBM System Journal. 40(2), 2001, 310-327.
Eric Demaine, Ian Foster, Karl Kesselman and Marc Snir, "Generalized Communicators in the Message Passing Interface." IEEE Trans. on Parallel and Distributed Systems 12(6), June 2001, 610-616.
Mitchell D Theis, Shoukat Ali, Howard Jay Siegel, Many Chandy, Kai Hwang, Ken Kennedy, Lui Sha, Kang G Shin and Marc Snir, "What are the Top Ten Most Influential Parallel and Distributed Processing Concepts of the Past Millenium?" Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing 61, 2001, 1827-1841.
J. E. Moreira, S. P. Midkiff, M. Gupta, P. V. Artigas, M. Snir, and R. D. Lawrence, "Java programming for high-performance numerical computing." IBM Systems Journal, 39(1), 2000, 21-56.
S.P. Midkiff, J. E. Moreira and M. Snir, "Optimizing array reference checking in Java programs." IBM Systems Journal, 37(3), 1998, 409-453.
Ely Upfal, Sergio Pelegrin and Marc Snir, "Randomized routing with shorter paths." IEEE Trans. on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 7(4), April 96, 356-362.
J.J. Dongarra, S.W. Otto, M. Snir, and D.W. Walker, "A Message Passing Standard for MPP and Workstations" Comm. of the ACM 39(7), July 1996, 84-90.
V. Bala, J. Bruck, R. Cypher, P. Elustondo, A. Ho, C-T. Ho, V. Bala, S. Kipnis, and M. Snir, "CCL: A portable and tunable collective communication library for scalable parallel computers." IEEE Trans. on Parallel and Distributed Systems 6(2), 1995, 154-164.
P.F. Corbett, D.G. Feitelson, J-P. Prost, G.S. Almasi, S.J. Baylor, A.S. Bolmarchich, Y. Hsu, J. Satran, M. Snir, R. Colao, B. Herr, J. Kavaky, T. R. Morgan, and A. Zlotek, "Parallel File System Development for the IBM SP Computers." IBM Systems Journal 34(2), 1995, 222-248.
D. Frye, K. Gildea, P. Hochschild, and M. Snir, "The communication software and parallel environment of the IBM SP2." IBM Systems Journal 34(2), 1995, 205-221.
T. Agerwala, J. Martin, J. Mirza, D. Sadler, D. Dias, and M. Snir, "SP2 System architecture." IBM Systems Journal 34(2), 1995, 152-184. Republished in Turning Points in Computing: 1962-1999. IBM Systems Journal 38(2) 1999, 414-446.
Baruch Schieber and Marc Snir, "Calling names on nameless networks." Information and Computation 113(1), 1994, 80-101.
Vas Bala, Jehoshua Bruck, Ray Bryant, Bob Cypher, Peter de Jong, Pablo Elustondo, Dan Frye, Alex Ho, Ching-Tien Ho, Gail Irwin, Shlomo Kipnis, Rick Lawrence and Marc Snir, "The IBM External User Interface for Scalable Parallel Systems." Parallel Computing 20(4), 1994, 445-462.
Message Passing Interface Forum, MPI: a message-passing interface standard. Special issue of the Int. J. of Supercomputer Applications and High Performance Computing, 8, 1994.
Prabhakar Raghavan and Marc Snir, "Memory versus randomization in on-line algorithms," IBM J. of Research and Development 38(6), 1994, 683-708.
Don Coppersmith, Peter G. Doyle, Prabhakar Raghavan and Marc Snir, "Random walks on weighted graphs, and applications to on-line algorithms." J. ACM 40(3), 1993, 421-453.
High Performance FORTRAN Forum, High performance FORTRAN language specification. Scientific Programming 2(1), 1993, 1-170.
Clyde Kruskal and Marc Snir, "Cost-performance tradeoffs for communication networks." Discrete Applied Mathematics 37-38, July 1992, 359-385.
Dror Zernik, Marc Snir and Dalia Malki, "Using visualization tools to understand concurrency." IEEE Software 9, 3, May 1992, 87-92.
Marc Snir, "Size-depth tradeoffs for monotone arithmetic circuits." Theoretical Computer Science 82, 1, May 1991, 85-93.
Hagit Attiya and Marc Snir, "Better computing on the anonymous ring," J. Algorithms 12, 2, June 1991, 204-238.
Alok Aggarwal, Ashok K. Chandra and Marc Snir, "Communication Complexity of PRAMs." Theoretical Computer Science 71 (1990) 3-28.
Clyde Kruskal, Larry Rudolph and Marc Snir, "A complexity theory of efficient parallel algorithms." Theoretical Computer Science 71 (1990) 95-132.
Clyde Kruskal, Larry Rudolph and Marc Snir, "Techniques for parallel manipulation of sparse matrices." Theoretical Computer Science 64, 1989, 135-157.
C. Kruskal, L. Rudolph and M. Snir, "Efficient parallel algorithms for graph problems." Algorithmica 5, 1990, 43-64.
D. Shasha and M. Snir, "Efficient and correct execution of parallel programs that share memory." ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 10, April 1988, 282-312.
H. Attiya, M. Snir and M. Warmuth, "Computing in an anonymous ring." J. ACM, 35,4, Oct. 1988, 845-875.
C. Kruskal, L. Rudolph and M. Snir, "Efficient synchronization on multiprocessors with shared memory." Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 10, 4, Oct. 1988, 579-601.
C. Kruskal, M. Snir, and A. Weiss, "On the distribution of waiting times in clocked multistage interconnection networks." IEEE Trans. on Computers 37,11, Nov. 1988, 1337-1353.
M. Snir, "Depth-size tradeoffs for parallel prefix computation." Journal of Algorithms 7 (1986), 185-201.
C. Kruskal and M. Snir, "A Unified Theory of Interconnection Network Structure." Theoretical Computer Science 48 (1986), 75-94.
C. Kruskal, L. Rudolph and M. Snir, "The power of parallel prefix." IEEE Trans. on Computers C-35 (1985), 965-968.
M. Snir, "On parallel searching." SIAM Journal on Computing, 14 (1985), 688-708.
M. Snir, "Lower bounds on probabilistic decision trees." Theoretical Computer Science 38 (1985) 69-82.
U. Manber, S. Moran and M. Snir, "Applications of Ramsey's theorem to decisions tree complexity." J. ACM, 32 (1985), 938-949.
Gottlieb, R. Grishman, C.K. Kruskal, K.P. McAuliffe, L. Rudolph, and M. Snir, "The NYU Ultracomputer - Designing a MIMD, shared-memory parallel computer." IEEE Trans. on Computers C-32 (1983), 175-189.
Y. Perl and M. Snir, "Circuit partitioning with size and connection constraints." Networks 13 (1983), 365-376.
C.K. Kruskal and M. Snir, "The performance of multistage interconnection networks for multiprocessors." IEEE Trans. on Computers C-32 (1983), 1091-1098.
M. Jerrum and M. Snir, "Some exact complexity results for straight-line computations over semirings." J. ACM 29 (1982), 874-897.
M. Snir, "Comparison between linear forms can help." Theoretical Computer Science 19 (1982), 321-330.
H. Gaifman and M. Snir, "Probabilities over rich languages, testing and randomness." J. of Symbolic Logic 47 (1982), 495-548.
M. Snir, "On the complexity of simplifying quadratic forms." Inf. Proc. Letters 12 (1981), 217-220.
E. Shamir and M. Snir, "On the depth complexity of formulas." Mathematical System Theory 13 (1980), 301-322.
M. Snir, "The covering problem of complete uniform hypergraphs." Discrete Math. 27 (1979), 103-105.
M. Snir and A. Barak, "A direct approach to the parallel evaluation of rational expressions with a small number of processors." IEEE Trans. on Computers C-26 (1977), 933-937.
J. Bruck, H. Olnovitch, M. Snir, and E. Upfal, Adaptive switching apparatus of multi-stage networks. US Patent #5345229, 9/6/94.
Ekanadham, Kattamuri; Franke, Hubertus; Joseph, Douglas James; Pattnaik, Pratap and Snir; Marc Memoryless Communications Adapter Including Queueing and Matching Primitives for Scalable Distributed Parallel Computer Systems. US Patent #5745781, 4/28/98.
K. Ekanadham, B-H Lim, P. Pattnaik and M. Snir, Methods of maintaining data coherencey in computer systems having a plurality of interconnected nodes. US Patent #6085295, 07/04/00
Shuf; Yefim; Franke, Hubertus; Gupta, Manish and Snir, Marc Method and apparatus for efficient virtual memory management. US Patent #6886085, April 26, 2005
Marc Snir and Telle Whitney, Advice to Members Seeking ACM Distinction, CACM July 2010, pg. 40-41
Martha E. Pollack and Marc Snir. Best Practices in Promotion and Tenure of Interdisciplinary Faculty, Computing Research News, 20(4), 2008
Marc Snir, U.S. Computer Science Delegation Visits China, Computing Research News, Vol. 18/No. 5, Nov. 2006
Marc Snir, "Brain Surgery for the Masses." HPCWire, Vol. 16, No. 8, Feb. 23rd 2007.
Susan L. Graham and Marc Snir , "The NRC Report on the Future of Supercomputing." Cyberinfrastructure Technology Watch Quarterly, Feb. 2005 (9 pages).
Kjolstad, Fredrik Berg; Dig, Danny; Acevedo, Gabriel; and Snir, Marc, Refactoring for Immutability. June 2010, http://hdl.handle.net/2142/16399
Robert Bocchino, Vikram Adve, Sarita Adve and Marc Snir, Parallel Programming Must Be Deterministic By Default, Technical Report UIUCDCS-R-2008-3012, Department of Computer Science, UIUC, November 2008
Marc Snir, Computing & Information Science & Engineering: Quo Vadimus? Technical Report I3-2008-01, Illinois Informatics Institute, Aug 2008.
Marc Snir, Parallel Programming Language 1, V0.9 (Draft). Technical Report No. UIUCDCS-R-2006-2696, Department of Computer Science, UIUC, July 2006.
Marc Snir and Jing Yu. On the Theory of Spatial and Temporal Locality. Technical Report No. UIUCDCS-R-2005-2 611, Department of Computer Science, UIUC, July 2005.
Jing Yu, Sara Baghsorkhi and Marc Snir. A New Locality Metric and Case Studies for HPCS Benchmarks. Technical Report No. UIUCDCS-R-2005-2564, Department of Computer Science, UIUC, April 2005.
Mingliang Wei, Marc Snir, Josep Torrellas and R. Brett Tremaine, A Brief Description of the NMP ISA and Benchmarks. (UIUCDCS-R-2005-2633)
Mingliang Wei, Marc Snir, Josep Torrellas and R. Brett Tremaine. A Near-Memory Processor for Vector, Streaming and Bit Manipulation Workloads. Technical Report No. UIUCDCS-R-2005-2557, Department of Computer Science, UIUC, April 2005.
Changhao Jiang and Marc Snir. Automatic Tuning Matrix Multiplication on Graphics Hardware. Technical Report No. UIUCDCS-R-2005-2558, Department of Computer Science, UIUC, April 2005.
Mingliang Wei, Marc Snir, Josep Torrellas and R. Brett Tremaine A Brief Description of the NMP ISA and Benchmarks. Technical Report No.UIUCDCS-R-2005-2633, Department of Computer Science, UIUC, Feb 2005.
Fran Allen et al., Blue Gene: A Vision for Protein Science Using a Petaflop Supercomputer. IBM Technical Report , 2001.
Marc Snir, A Note on N-Body Computation with Cutoffs. IBM Technical Report RC-22059, May 2001.
George S. Almasi, Calin Cascaval, Jose G. Castanos, Monty Denneau, Wilm Donath, Maria Eleftheriou, Mark Giampapa, Howard Ho, Derek Lieber, Jose E. Moreira, Dennis Newns, Marc Snir, Henry S. Warren, Jr., Demonstrating the Scalability of a Molecular Dynamics Application on a Petaflop Computer. IBM Technical Report RC-21965, Feb 2001.
Eric Wu, Tony Bolmarcich, Marc Snir, David Wootton, Farid Parpia, Tony Chang, Ewing Lusk, Bill Gropp. From trace generation to visualization: a performance framework for distributed parallel systems. IBM Technical Report RC-21811, July 2000.
Jose Moreira, Sam E. Midkiff, Manish Gupta, Pedro Artigas, Marc Snir, Rick Lawrence. Java Programming for High Performance Numerical Computing. IBM Technical Report RC-21481, May 1999.
Sam Midkiff, Jose Moreira, Marc Snir. Java for Numerically Intensive Computing: from Flops to Gigaflops. IBM Technical Report RC-21351, Dec 1998.
Kattamuri Ekanadham, Mark Giampapa, Joefon Jann, Beng-Hong Lim, Pratap Pattnaik, Marc Snir, Alan Benner, Dean Liberty, David Sadler, Gautam Shah, Hardware and operating system design for a cluster-based scalable shared memory system. IBM Technical Report RC-21318, Oct 98.
Samuel F. Midkiff, Jose E. Moreira and Marc Snir, Optimizing array references checking in Java programs. IBM Technical Report RC-1184, May 1998.
Beng-Hong Lim, Philip Heidelberger, Pratap Pattnaik and Marc Snir, Message proxies for efficient, protected communication on SMP clusters. IBM Technical Report RC-20522, Aug 1996.
Hubertus Franke, C. Eric Wu, Michel Riviere, Pratap Pattnaik, and Marc Snir, MPI Programming Environment for IBM SP1/SP2. IBM Technical Report RC 19991, March 1995.
T. Agerwala, J. Martin, J. Mirza, D. Sadler, D. Dias and M. Snir, SP2 System architecture. IBM Technical Report RC 20012, Jan 1995.
Marc Snir, Peter Hochschild, D. Frye and Kevin Gildea, The Communication Software and Parallel Environment of IBM SP2. IBM Technical Report RC 19812, Nov 1994.
Peter Corbett, Dror Feitelson, Yarsun Hsu, Jean Pierre Prost, Marc Snir, Sam Fineberg, Bill Nitzberg, Bernard Traversat and Parkson Wong, MPI-IO: a parallel file I/O interface for MPI version 0.2. IBM Technical Report RC 19841, Nov. 1994.
Hubertus Franke, Peter Hochschild, Pratap Pattnaik, Jean-Pierre Prost and Marc Snir, MPI on IBM SP1/SP2: current status and future directions. IBM Technical Report RC 19761, Sept. 1994.
Jean-Pierre Prost, Marc Snir, Peter F. Corbett and Dror Feitelson, MPI-IO, a message-passing interface for concurrent I/O. IBM Technical Report RC 19712, August 1994.
Hubertus Franke, Peter Hochschild, Pratap Pattnaik and Marc Snir, MPI-F: An efficient implementation of MPI on IBM SP1. IBM Technical Report RC 19535, April 94.
Hubertus Franke, Peter Hochschild, Pratap Pattnaik and Marc Snir, An efficient implementation of MPI. IBM Technical Report RC 19493, March 94.
(*) Marc Snir, Issues and directions in scalable parallel computing. IBM Technical Report RC 18940, May 1993.
Vas Bala, Jehoshua Bruck, Ray Bryant, Bob Cypher, Peter de Jong, Pablo Elustondo, Dan Frye, Alex Ho, Ching-Tien Ho, Gail Irwin, Shlomo Kipnis, Rick Lawrence and Marc Snir, The IBM External User Interface for Scalable Parallel Systems. IBM Technical Report RC 19048, July 1993.
Ely Upfal, Sergio Felegrin and Marc Snir, Randomized routing with shorter paths. IBM Technical Report RC 18873, April 1993.
J. Bruck, R. Cypher, P. Elustondo, A. Ho, C-T. Ho, V. Bala, S. Kipnis, and M. Snir CCL: A portable and tunable collective communication library for scalable parallel computers. IBM Technical Report RJ 9284, April 1993.
Vasanth Bala, Shlomo Kipnis, Larry Rudolph, and Marc Snir Designing Efficient, Scalable, and Portable Collective Communication Libraries. IBM Technical Report RC 18635, Jan 1993.
J. Bruck, R. Cypher, L. Gravano, A. Ho, C-T. Ho, S. Konstantinidou, S. Kipnis and M. Snir, A survey of routing issues for the Vulcan parallel computer, IBM Technical Report RJ 8839, June 1992.
Dror Zernik, Marc Snir and Dalia Malki, There is a time for every event: a visual parallel approach. IBM Technical Report RC 17743, Feb. 1992.
Don Coppersmith, Peter G. Doyle, Prabhakar Raghavan and Marc Snir, Random walks on weighted graphs, and applications to on-line algorithms, IBM Technical Report RC 15840, June 1990.
A. Aggarwal, B. Alpern, A. Chandra and M. Snir, A model for hierarchical memory. IBM Technical Report RC 15118, Oct. 1989.
Alok Aggarwal, Ashok K. Chandra and Marc Snir, On communication latency in PRAM computations. IBM Technical Report RC 14973, Sept. 1989.
Baruch Schieber and Marc Snir, Calling names on nameless networks, IBM Technical Report RC 14723, June 1989.
Alok Aggarwal, Ashok K. Chandra and Marc Snir, On communication complexity in PRAM's. IBM Technical Report RC 14998, Feb. 1989.
P. Teller, R. Kenner and M. Snir, TLB consistency on highly-parallel shared-memory multiprocessors. IBM Technical Report RC 13366, Dec. 1988.
Prabhakar Raghavan and Marc Snir, Memory versus randomization in on-line algorithms, IBM technical Report RC 14439, Nov. 1988. Updated version, IBM technical report RC 15622, March 1990.
Marc Snir Size-depth tradeoffs for monotone arithmetic circuits. IBM Technical Report RC 13742, May 1988.
Hagit Attiya and Marc Snir Better computing on the anonymous ring. IBM Technical Report RC 13657, April 1988.
Clyde Kruskal, Larry Rudolph and Marc Snir, A complexity theory of parallel efficient algorithms. IBM Technical Report RC 13572, March 1988.
Clyde Kruskal, Larry Rudolph and Marc Snir, Techniques for parallel manipulation of sparse matrices. Technical Report RC 13364, Dec. 1987.
A. Aggarwal, A. Chandra and M. Snir, Hierarchical memory with block transfer. IBM Technical Report RC 13035, May 87.
M. Snir, Communication with shared variables in multiprocessors: hardware and software issues. Technical Report TR 86-2, May 1986, Computer Science dept., Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Clyde Kruskal, Larry Rudolph and Marc Snir, Efficient synchronization on multiprocessors with shared memory, Ultracomputer Note 105, Courant Institute, New York University, May 1986.
Dennis Shasha and Marc Snir, Efficient and correct execution of parallel programs that share memory. Ultracomputer Note 96, Courant Institute, New York University, March 1986. Revised version IBM Tech. Rep. RC 12936, Sept. 1987. IBM Tech. Report RC 12936, July 87.
Yosi Benasher, Jim Lipkis and M. Snir, ParC, a parallel version of C. Ultracomputer Note, New York University, Oct. 1985.
J. Edler, A. Gottlieb, C. Kruskal, K. McAuliffe, L. Rudolph, M. Snir, P. Teller, and J. Wilson, Issues Related to MIMD, Shared-Memory Computers: The NYU Ultracomputer Approach. Part I Ultracomputer Note 78, Part II Ultracomputer Note 79, New York University, Dec. 1984.
C. Attiya, M. Snir and M. Warmuth, Computing on an anonymous ring. Tech. Rep. UCSC-CRL-85-3, Computer Research laboratory, University of California, Santa Cruz, Nov. 1985.
S. Dickey, R. Kenner and M. Snir, An implementation of a combining network for the NYU Ultracomputer. Ultracomputer Note 93, NYU, Jan. 1986.
C.K. Kruskal and M. Snir, A unified theory of interconnection network structures. Ultracomputer Note 106, Courant Institute, New York University, Oct. 1983 (revised March 1984, June 1986).
M. Snir, Depth-size tradeoffs for parallel prefix computation. Tech. Rep. 83-25, Dept. of CS, Hebrew University, August 1983.
M. Snir, Lower bounds on probabilistic linear decision trees. Res. Rep. 83-6, Dept. of Computer Science, Hebrew University, Jan. 1983.
M. Snir, On parallel searching. Tech. Rep. 45, Dept. of Computer Science, New York University, June 1982. Revised version Research report 83-21, Computer Science Dept., Hebrew University, June 1983.
M. Snir and J. Solworth, The Ultraswitch - A VLSI network node for parallel processing. Tech. Rep. NYU, August 1982.
M. Snir, On partitioning of regular networks. Tech. Rep. Dept. of Computer Science, New York University, July 1982.
C. Kruskal and M. Snir, Some results on multistage interconnection networks for multiprocessors. Tech. Rep. 44, Dept. of Computer Science, New York University, May 1982.
A. Gottlieb, R. Grishman, C.K. Kruskal, K.P. McAuliffe, L. Rudolph and M. Snir, The NYU Ultracomputer - a general-purpose parallel processor. Ultracomputer Note 32, Dept. of Computer Science, New York University, July 1981.
M. Snir, Balancing is not always good. Tech. Rep. 033, Dept. of Computer Science, New York University, May 1981.
M. Snir, Lower bounds on VLSI implementations of communication networks. Tech. Rep. 032, Dept. of Computer Science, New York Uni versity, May 1981.
M. Snir, "Netsim" network simulator for the ultracomputer. Ultracomputer Note 28, Dept. of Computer Science, New York University, May 1981.
M. Snir, Crossbar 1616 (a neophyte incursion into VLSI design). CSR-68-80, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh, 1980.
M. Snir, On the complexity of simplifying quadratic forms. CSR-67-80, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh, 1980.
M. Snir, Comparison between linear forms can help. CSR-66-80, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh, 1980.
M. Jerrum and M. Snir, Some exact complexity results for straight-line computations over semirings. CSR-58-80, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh, 1980.
M. Snir, On the size complexity of monotone formulas. CSR-46-79. Dept. of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh.
E. Shamir and M. Snir, On the depth complexity of formulas. Technical Report, Dept. of Computer Science, Hebrew University, Jan. 1979
E. Shamir and M. Snir, Lower bounds on depth in monotone arithmetic computations. RC7055, 1978, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center.
E. Shamir and M. Snir, Lower bounds on the number of multiplications and the number of additions in monotone computations. RC6757, 1977, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center.
M. Snir, Improved bounds on the parallel evaluation of matrix expressions. Res. rep. 25, July 1975, Dept. of Computer Science, Hebrew University.
Barak and M. Snir, On the parallel evaluation of rational expressions. Res. rep. 14, Jan. 1975, Dept. of Computer Science, Hebrew University.
CS 420 - Parallel Progrmg: Sci & Engrg
CS 498 - Parallel Algorithms
CSE 402 - Parallel Progrmg: Sci & Engrg
ECE 492 - Parallel Progrmg: Sci & Engrg
Marc Snir Heads Toward Retirement, Leaving Legacy as Former Illinois CS Head and Leader in HPC
News | May 6, 2019
European Universities Honor Snir, Padua for Contributions to Parallel Computing, HPC
Beyond Silicon: Squeezing More Out of Chips
News | November 1, 2016
Snir Chosen to Lead Mathematics and Computer Science Division of Argonne
News | July 25, 2016
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Spears, already before humans?
This 2013 video is called Neanderthal Spears vs. Cro-Magnon Spears.
The traditional theory used to be that Neanderthals, later than Homo heidelbergensis, did not have throwing spears, only spears for stabbing; and that Homo sapiens, the present human species, first used throwing spears. A more recent theory is that Homo heidelbergensis already had them about 400,000 years ago. And now …
From Student Science:
Human ancestors threw spears
Ancient spear tips suggest early humanlike species were throwing sharp spears long before people did
by Stephen Ornes
7:35am, December 12, 2013
Long before guns and arrows, spears were the tool of choice for ancient hunters. Topped with sharp, pointed rocks, spears at first made it possible to kill animals by stabbing them close-up. Later, spears were sturdy enough to be thrown at animals from a distance.
Until recently, the earliest known throwing spears dated back 80,000 years. But a recent discovery in East Africa now extends that type of spear hunting to a far earlier time, one that precedes humans. It suggests that at least 279,000 years ago, an earlier, humanlike species must have been hunting big game, like hippos and antelope.
Scientists dug up spear tips from that far back in time at a site in Ethiopia called Gademotta. Back then, during the Stone Age, tools were usually made from found materials like stone, wood or bone. Any early spear-throwers at that time weren’t people but early ancestors of humans called hominids. Hominids are a family of primates that includes humans and their extinct ancestors (known only from fossils).
The ancient hominid’s spears most likely were long wooden poles topped with sharp, hand-chipped (sharpened) tips made from glassy volcanic rock, explains Yonatan Sahle. He is an archaeologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has been studying the ancient spear tips made from this rock, known as obsidian. Given the tips’ age, his team concludes that prehuman species must have spear-hunted too. His team reported its findings Nov. 13 in the journalPLOS ONE.
The new finding challenges previously held ideas about the earliest throwers of stone-tipped spears, says John Shea. An archeologist at Stony Brook University in New York, he did not work on the new study. Previous studies had suggested ancient peoples started attaching stones to spears capable of stabbing animals close-up no earlier than 100,000 years ago.
The new find shows that more complex throwing spears were made at Gademotta long before then. They probably belonged to a species “out of which the human species evolved in eastern Africa,” Shea told Science News. Which hominid left behind the points? No one knows. Scientists have unearthed no prehuman fossils at the site.
Sahle and his coworkers studied 141 stone spear tips from Gademotta. Viewed under a microscope, 12 tips showed damage to their edges. Previous experiments have shown this type of damage comes from throwing stone-tipped spears into an animal that’s a short distance away. The scientists also found tiny marks near the base of the points, where they had been tied onto their wooden spear shafts.
The scientists estimated the age of the spear tips by where they were found. Seven were discovered beneath a layer of volcanic ash that is 279,000 years old. The rest were found buried in upper layers that were at least 105,000 years old.
Power Words
archaeology The study of human history and prehistory through the excavation of sites and the analysis of artifacts and other physical remains.
evolve To change gradually over generations, or a long period of time. In living organisms, the evolution usually involves random changes to genes that will then be passed along to an individual’s offspring. These can lead to new traits, such as altered coloration, new susceptibility to disease or protection from it, or different shaped features (such as legs, antennae, toes or internal organs).
extinct No longer in existence, as in a species or larger group of organisms.
hominid A primate belonging to the family of animals that includes humans and their fossil ancestors.
obsidian A hard, dark, glasslike volcanic rock.
primate The order of mammals that includes humans, apes, monkeys and related animals (such as tarsiers, the Daubentonia and other lemurs).
Stone Age A prehistoric period, lasting millions of years and ending thousands of years ago, when weapons and tools were made of stone or of materials such as bone, wood or horn.
B. Bower. “Human ancestors threw stone-tipped spears at prey.” Science News. Nov. 19, 2013.
B. Bower. “Where do humans come from?” Science News for Students. Nov. 5, 2013.
E. Sohn. “Ancient cave behavior.” Science News for Students.
A 90,000-year-old bone knife hints special tools appeared early in Africa. Archaeologists found the implement in a coastal cave in Morocco. By Bruce Bower, 2:00pm, October 3, 2018.
Why modern javelin throwers hurled Neandertal spears at hay bales. Some extinct hominids didn’t just stab prey from a close distance, a study finds. By Bruce Bower, 1:51pm, January 28, 2019.
Hominids may have hunted rabbits as far back as 400,000 years ago. Small game was on the menu surprisingly early for members of the human genus in Western Europe. By Bruce Bower, 2:00pm, March 6, 2019.
Stone-Tipped Spears Were In Use 85,000 Years Before Modern Humans Appeared, Scientists Say (huffingtonpost.com)
Stone-tipped spears pre-date human race (stuff.co.nz)
Stone-Tipped Spears Predate the Human Race (gizmodo.com)
Who Was Throwing Spears Before Humans? (freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com)
The world’s oldest javelins: Stone spears from 280,000 years ago provides clue as to how humanity evolved (dailymail.co.uk)
This entry was posted in Archaeology, Mammals and tagged Africa, Ethiopia by petrel41. Bookmark the permalink.
19 thoughts on “Spears, already before humans?”
Brenda on December 15, 2013 at 10:19 pm said:
Very interesting. Thanks!
Maybe later more about the hominids who threw these spears will be found out.
Brenda on December 16, 2013 at 11:51 am said:
I hope so. Perhaps some part of them lives on in us.
Indeed, Brenda, if they will turn out to be direct ancestors of Homa sapiens. They may also belong to some sidenbranch of hominids, like the “hobbits” of Flores island; about whom there is much debate among palaeontologists:
https://dearkitty1.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/pre-hobbit-human-ancestors-of-flores/
Brenda on December 16, 2013 at 4:33 pm said:
Yes, that is another fascinating find. Flores Island has such amazing things.
Indeed. What more research results from Flores will there be?
If I am remember right I watched a special on it that compared it to the Lilliputians story, suggesting that perhaps the myths of a race of small people was actually true, and passed by story. If memory is accurate (Accuracy declining with age) the island also had other species that were of unusual size, too. Part of the show was about how island life can affect the size of a species….
Yes, there are fossil elephants on Flores, a lot smaller than usually. Often, on islands big animals gradually grow smaller (lack of food) and small animals bigger (lack of predators).
Flores hobbits were a lot bigger than the Lilliputians in Jonathan Swift’s story.
Brenda on December 17, 2013 at 2:49 am said:
Yes, I didn’t write the special, but some of the words lodged in my fairy tale writer brain and entwined with stories. It’s my nature, a bit fae or crazy, but I’m never bored. 😉
I hope you never will get bored 🙂
🙂 Me, too, since it means my brain has stopped working. 🙂
petrel41 on December 17, 2013 at 11:42 am said:
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Daily Stormer The Most Censored Publication in History
The Perdition of the Judeo-Left
Daily Stormer January 8, 2017
The victory of the National Socialists in the revolution of 1933 could easily be viewed as a victory against the Jewish-commanded Bolsheviks, but their ultimate achievement was in kneecapping the failed and self-absorbed institutional conservatives. Against the militant Left, the NSDAP’s prescription was to fight the enemy through Aufbruchsstimmung – revolutionary awakening – which elevates the human passion for fatherland, idealism and hunger for genuine social justice through political mobilization.
The ideal National Socialist – pushy, dreamy, militant and ready to impose the will – has more in common with the temperament of a non-Jewish, non-homosexual communist/Leftist than with a conservative. For this reason, every conservative – from Cato the Elder to Enoch Powell to Stefan Molyneux – masquerading their masturbatory personal addiction for looking smarter than thou through high-minded abstractions, has and will fail to achieve their stated goals.
Following Powell’s 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech against non-white immigration, he was sacked from the Conservative party. The vast majority of the British working class supported Powell, and immediately following his dismissal, thousands of dock workers, meat porters, and others left their stations to strike in protest in favor of Powell’s reinstatement.
A 92-page petition backing Powell’s immigration stance was presented to him, offering to cripple the British economy and bring down the government if they didn’t grant them their demands to eliminate mass immigration. But conservatives are inverted special snowflakes, who hate collective accomplishments – even ones that benefit them – more than they hate corruption they can pat themselves on the back for signaling against.
Powell rejected the proposal for a national revolution, in fear for further damage to his personal prestige and legacy if they failed in the wake of the Jewish/British establishment dropping their hate speech case and offering him a personal compromise. Meanwhile, the parliamentary left had no qualms setting Britain aflame. Leftist college students and the Jew-engineered Beatles led a well-financed but brutal boutique movement in cooperation with the British media to put down the revolutionary working class upheaval, and without leaders, the workers were defeated. The Judeo-Left has revised this embarrassing black eye to their (former) narrative as advocates of the working people by claiming some of the dock workers and meat porters were “plants” – former members of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.
The subjugation of the self for the well-being of the whole – collectivism – is anathema to conservatism, which is why every conservative movement in history has failed. Thanks to Powell’s cowardice, Englishmen are today a helpless minority in London.
Beyond Left and Right
As a working class and anti-capitalist movement, the National Socialists bashed the conservatives and bourgeoisie as capitulators and traitors. Both the Social-Democrats and Communists (KPD) dominated large swaths of Germany at the time, but internationalism/globalism has never been popular among Proletarians, which meant that winning over the non-Jewish followers of Marxism in Red Berlin was a difficult but manageable task.
Throughout the 1920s into the breakthroughs of the 1930’s, Joseph Goebbels took the relatively small presence of the NSDAP and turned it into a national phenomenon. Armed with opposition to capital from a nationalist perspective, and bolstered by the Sturmabteilung to defend meetings from attacks by the Roter Frontkämpferbund (Red Front – the communist paramilitary organization that beat opponents), Goebbels won the hearts and minds of enormous numbers of ordinary Social-Democrat and Communist voters.
By 1932-33, when the NSDAP was surging, the Communist Party leader Ernst Thalmann wrote , in veiled terms , on the ideological helplessness of Bolshevism once the political front shifted from economics to questions of nationalism. With the Nationalsocialists calling for many of the economic reforms the KPD championed, Thalmann wrote of a need deemphasize the globalist marbling within Marxist ideology, and even pose as German patriots themselves:
because of the great upsurge in Chauvinism it will be impossible to drive back Hitler fascism unless we expose it on the national question and proclaim our revolutionary road in the liberation struggle against Versailles to the masses.
In the Communist Party newspaper Pionier Des Bolshewismus, the concept was extrapolated upon, and enjoyed some limited initial success:
Very many Nazi voters expected national liberation through their party, which it can never deliver. We must stress the national question more strongly than before in our agitation and propaganda and show that the KPD is the only party waging the struggle for Germany’s national liberation from the tribute burdens of the Young Plan. The radicalisation particularly of proletarian elements in the Nazi party is manifesting itself clearly through the switching of individuals and even whole groups of SA members to the Kampfbund gegen des Faschismus or the KPD.
This late game desperate strategy was difficult to hold together due to the flagrant abandonment of fundamental Marxist “scientific” assertions, but was utilized to an extent (obviously in a watered down form, since he was not a Marxist) by President Bill Clinton’s highly successful campaigns during the 1990s.
In the end, the story and strategy deployed by the Nationalsocialists to smash the Kiked Left is quite remarkable, and it is precisely why the Judeo-Left will hold their nose and say “P.U.” to some cuckold like Paul Ryan, but become physically violent when a figure preaches nationalism in conjunction with working and middle class economic grievances.
As with the KPD voters in Berlin that later jumped to become fanatical Nationalsocialists, most ordinary red state white people who voted for Leftists like Bernie Sanders in droves are not our enemy. They simply find themselves left behind by neo-liberal capitalism and rarely hear anyone talking about solutions. As Trump began abandoning Losertarian Paul Ryan cuckenomics, white workers who voted for Bernie Sanders jumped ship.
This growing demographic of discontent is precisely what Jews fear us persuading to our emerging movement.
Nu-Left Identity Politics: A Noose We Will Use to Hang Them
The de-emphasis of left-wing rhetoric away from economic grievances to racial agitation against white people was a shot fired prematurely that some on the Left are now beginning to regret. As fair minded strategists simply looking to make society better, white non-Jewish Leftists are willing to take another look at “identity politics” and possibly dismiss them because they needlessly attack white people. But the selected Negroes, sexual deviants and non-whites Jews have spent decades grooming and inciting to lead the present-day war on whites have already left the port, and the effect in the current information war has been like a bull in a china shop, or more accurately, an HIV positive African in a newborn nursery.
This newly minted contradiction between Jews (whose ultimate plan is to exterminate the white race) and white Leftists (who sometimes just feel left-wing politics are the correct – or only – vehicle for improving living standards, protecting the little guy or defending the environment) is embodied by the Socialist publication The Jacobin, that has been a loud critic of anti-white politics.
Conversely, the Jew Ned Resnikoff, for the kike astroturf site “Think Progress,” has written a long-winded column articulating his fears about the potential of white revolutionaries breaking fully from conservatism, both in rhetoric and in temperament.
Think Progress:
Third Position ideologues tend to be impressed with their own originality, but fascists have always borrowed from the left when it suited them. Benito Mussolini — the fascist leader par excellence — began his career in politics as a scribbler for various socialist publications; he would go on to smuggle elements of socialist thought into a right-wing, nationalist framework. Nor was he alone, according to Barnard College political scientist Sheri Berman.
“During the interwar period, social democrats, fascists, and national socialists championed a ‘third way’ in economics that avoided the extremes of free-market liberalism and communism, insisting that the state could and should control capitalism without destroying it. … The main difference was that under Fascists and Nazis, the price to pay for this program was the destruction of democracy and the jettisoning of civil liberties and human rights that accompanied it,” wrote Berman in The Primary of Politics, her book on European social democracy.
Though the biggest difference between Third Positionism and other strands of fascism may be little more than a matter of emphasis, it is nonetheless an important distinction. Far more than many other white supremacist radicals, early Third Position devotees grasped the usefulness of fascism’s political malleability. And by deliberately adopting left-wing vocabulary for some of their ideas, they presaged American white supremacism’s return to the rhetoric of blue collar populism — something which Dixiecrats had embraced in the first half of the twentieth century, but gradually abandoned as they shifted into the Republican coalition.
Groups like the National Bolshevik Party and American Third Position can now plausibly claim to have been ahead of their time. They saw, better than nearly anyone else, how even a symbolic gesture toward left-wing economic thought could radically expand white nationalism’s recruitment prospects.
But Third Positionism nonetheless spent decades on the fringes of the fringe. Until the liberal order’s weakness gave them an opening.
What Labour did have — thanks to excitement over Corbyn and a rules change that made it easier to join — was hundreds of thousands of new members. But these freshman Labourites were skewing the party’s demographics even further away from the working class that Corbyn claimed to represent. A January 2016 report on the incoming Labour membership found that “high-status city dwellers living in central locations and pursuing careers with high rewards are highly over-represented.”
Without an industrial base, a disciplined trade union movement, or a coherent economic critique, the party has little to hold itself together besides Corbyn’s appeal as a cult hero. In the words of British philosopher John Gray: “The defining feature of Corbynite Labour is not an anachronistic utopian socialism, but a very modern kind of liberal narcissism.”
Recent British history has proven that such narcissism is powerless against a sustained right-wing assault. Although Labour was officially against Brexit, Corbyn’s public efforts on behalf of Remain were perfunctory at best, and more than one-third of the party’s supporters ultimately voted Leave. Now Labour is hemorrhaging votes to UKIP, prompting one prominent MP to observe that there are “no safe Labour seats” anymore.
Resnikoff is well-cognizant of the vulnerability Jewish agenda-makers like himself face in the current political climate, but his solution – difficult to believe – is to try and aggravate and alienate whites even further.
White workers have not been abandoned to their fate, but they constitute a smaller-than-ever portion of the working class as a whole. And thanks to a combination of changing demographics and civil rights legislation, they have lost some of the prerogatives of whiteness when it comes to things like hiring disparities and access to public goods. To stop “leaving behind” white workers would mean to reify America’s caste system so they can regain those privileges. The white nationalists of the “alt-right” understand this and make it explicit. On the white left, it remains subtext.
But there’s no need for subtext when it comes to describing the common enemies of the white left and populist right: black and brown “social justice warriors” and Clintonian centrism, which often get depicted as natural allies and enemies of the white working class. The left-wing version of this critique argues that “SJWs” insist on the primacy of “identity politics” — by which they mean any analysis that foregrounds issues of race, gender, and orientation, instead of calling them adjuncts to the labor question — and thereby strengthen neoliberalism by distracting everyone from the real issues. As an editor for the socialist journal Jacobin put it in May, “when racism can be blamed, capitalism can be exonerated.”
White nationalist ideology is powerful enough to bridge the left-right divide, but it is not yet powerful enough to command an electoral majority. Donald Trump lost the popular vote, and he is currently the most unpopular president-elect in the history of modern polling. Whatever their individual prejudices, most Americans want to live in a multiracial democracy.
But that democracy is under threat. White nationalists understand they can’t win a fair election, so they will spent the next four years trying to render more elections either unfair or irrelevant. They’re already well along in North Carolina, where the Republican legislature has moved to strip power from the incoming Democratic governor. In any state they can, white populists will soon take further steps to hobble the offices they don’t control and suppress non-white votes.
Under no circumstances should this movement back away from its commitment to pluralism. The aim of white nationalism is to destroy the multiracial democratic state, and any attempt at compromise will only bring it closer to that goal. People of color, women, LGBT people, and members of other marginalized groups are not a liability to the resistance against Trump; they are its leaders.
In other words, Jews are quietly doubling down on their genocidal plan, which will only succeed in awakening the racial instinct of whites even further. This will deepen the current divide within left-wing institutions and their white grassroots, once they are nothing more than old spinsters, fags and seething non-whites with a chip on their shoulder, Jews will be forced to micromanage more and more, and continue exposing themselves.
Hate and Bourgeois Narcissism Aren’t Enough for Jews to Stop the Aryan Man
All modern Leftist ideas are predicated on the racial hatred of white people, the penis-envy of men, and the demonization of natural families. Separate hate from politics, and the po-mo left literally has no position on anything. That is precisely why our worldview, Western civilization and protecting the people that bear its torch, can wrestle power out of their hands easily – even though they have all of the cultural institutions, big businesses, education system, and media locked down for themselves.
Enlightening the public is the first step. All it took in the Chicongo case to begin mobilizing the white masses was to upload and spread the video of Negroes kidnapping and torturing a young white man while racially abusing him.
National revolutionaries are now forcing the mass media to cover what is actually going on in America – even if with transparent spin – and even indirectly forcing Chicongo’s police department to take a brief break from eating at Rahm Emanuel’s trough and call it a “hate crime.” This would’ve never happened even 10 years ago.
The mistake some on the right make in approaching the public is the assumption of apathy rather than ignorance. The average white person isn’t a racialist because they don’t know the extent of what’s going on in their country, and if they do, they don’t know how many other people there are out there who feel the same that they do and they can work with to fight back.
The post-modern Left is in deeper trouble than their Communist forbearers were in 1930s Europe. Normal people, unlike the KPD in 1932 Germany, have all jumped ship, and rightfully perceive the (((left))) as hostile not just to their beliefs, but to their lives.
The Jew Michelle Goldberg introduced the wearing of the “safety pin” to show “marginalized groups” that they are “white allies.” This campaign was peddled aggressively to the most suggestible element of the public – women – initially touted in fashion and gossip trash like Fashionista and Vogue.
And while a handful of upper middle class women have apparently taken up this idiocy, how many people have you seen wearing a safety pin? Outside of SWPLy Midwest college campuses and Manhattan Jew Brunch-spots, probably none. Even the slowest of people are beginning to notice that Leftists/liberals and strident neo-liberal vulture capitalists are working together to destroy the white working class.
The mongrelization of cultures, traditions and yes races (in spite of instinctual avoidance for most), creates something neither here nor there, only what unites the base aspect of man: the ever expanding stomach and pursuit of genital stimulation – McDonald’s, Weed and Porn.
Culturally bankrupt and deracinated man is malleable to the Jew, an animated stomach and dick that works for cheap and only demands fleeting gimmicks in compensation until it dies. The Jew, meanwhile, plans to plop his feet up at the desk looking down on the ants from his 100 story Manhattan office building, free to steal and murder without having to worry about an anti-Jewish backlash. By pushing for more multi-culturalism, the left plants the seed for super-capitalism, where all non-economic and non-consumerist values that are what separate us from animals are obliterated forever. Safe to say that Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart and Apple are happy to support this endeavor.
The two ideological frequencies have intersected, but now our guys are surging increasingly beyond the reach of the Jew. We must continue attacking conservatives by completely dismissing and mocking their stupid rhetoric, while taking up “leftist” (or what conservative’s like Molyneux would refer to as “collectivist”) ideas that are compatible with our mission.
The hard-left Jacobin, the canary in the coal mine, has addressed the issue yet again in light of the controversy over (((MTV’s))) anti-white video in a universally ignored, even attacked, piece by Shuja Haider.
Jacobin Magazine:
In contrast, the “2017 Resolutions” video doesn’t present much of a threat to the alt-right. The backlash to it was so severe that MTV removed it within forty-eight hours of posting it. But the statement it makes isn’t just ineffective as political strategy — it also fails as political analysis. While the video names the object (“white guys”) it addresses, effectively aligning them with the Right, it doesn’t articulate the identity of the subject making the statement.
The speaking subject is “we.” What’s left unanswered is, who does that pronoun represent? Who does it include? This is the question Richard Spencer has put front and center in National Policy Institute propaganda: “who are we?”
The alt-right has an answer — one that is consistent with the long history of imperialism and white supremacy. As their adoption of the language of identity politics shows, the Right takes comfort when the Left’s answer merely inverts the one generated by this history. It allows the Right to draw the battle lines, marking the territory of their white national fantasy.
I’m sorry to break it to you Mr. Haider, but the identity of the subject attacking “white guys” is Sumner Rothstein, one of the Jews cynically looking to use your dreams and aspirations as a means for his own racial exterminationist ends.
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Johann Michael Mueller the First (1655-1695), Pietist Refugee, 52 Ancestors #97
Posted on November 8, 2015 by Roberta Estes
The Johann Michael Mueller, now Miller, family began in the Germanic area of Europe long before the advent of written records.
European Beginnings
With the decline of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, the Elbe Germani moved south into Southern Germany and Austria. The Alemannians lived in what are now Bavaria and the Baden areas, but was then called Swabia. Around 500 AD, or 2500 years ago, the Burgundians (French speaking) moved into western Switzerland. The Allemannians (German speaking) moved into what is the Middleland area of Switzerland. The Alemannians were an agricultural people, but pagan and barbarian. The Franks who lived in central Germany and who also moved into Switzerland conquered the Alemanni tribe and after a struggle, “Christianized” the people and set the moral code for the next generations. They also introduced feudalism to the area.
Thus a roaming Germanic tribe was given a moral and religious structure as they resided in and farmed the area later known as the Canton of Berne, where our German speaking Miller family is first found.
These ancestors lived in small villages and small inter-related family groups called clans. This organization was similar to that which was seen later on the American frontier. Many family surnames associated early in this part of Switzerland are seen later in Pennsylvania and Ohio among the Pietist religions. Hence the family associations that are seen in relationship to the Millers on the American frontier were linkages that go back many, many generations into Europe.
For many generations these people farmed the land in Switzerland and most likely were faithful Catholics.
When the Protestant Reformation came to the Canton of Berne, Switzerland, some of these rural families followed the teachings of Zwingli and became part of the Reformed Church. Others followed the teachings of Conrad Grebel and became part of the Anabaptist movement in Switzerland. These became known as the Swiss Brethren. The map below shows Berne as a fortified city in 1638. Perhaps our ancestors walked those very ramparts, entered through the city gate, conducted business and sold their wares.
Here’s an aerial view of the old part of the city today.
In the later part of the 17th century, the Swiss Pietists split into two groups; the Swiss Mennonites under the leadership of Hans Reist and the Amish who derived their name from Jacob Ammann of Erlenbach.
Thus the small clans and inter-related family groups who were farmers in the valleys of Switzerland now become members of three separate religious movements, namely the Reformed, Mennonite and the Amish. This is why years later on the frontier in America, the Reformed (now transformed into German Baptists known as Brethren or Dunkards), the Mennonites and the Amish have similar and seemingly related surnames and practices.
Switzerland to Germany
Our Miller family line begins in Switzerland with Johann Michael Mueller, born in 1655 in Zollikofen, Switzerland.
Zollikofen is just outside of Bern.
During the first half of the seventeenth century, Switzerland was relatively untouched by the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, (1618-1648), a Catholic-Protestant conflict, fought principally on German soil. Switzerland enjoyed peace and prosperity and had a good market for its excess products. During the second half of the same century a social reaction set in, which was made acute by political and religious confusion. In 1653, the peasants of the Cantons of Bern, Lucerne, Solothurn and Basel revolted against the authorities, chiefly for social reasons. Since there were good opportunities for new settlers in depopulated Germany, many people left the Canton of Bern during this period and journeyed northward into foreign parts, specifically Germany.
The Rhine River was the way out of Switzerland and these families settled wherever it led. Beyond Germany, emigration into the “lowlands” (Netherlands) as the destination of the emigrants used to be called, lasted into the eighteenth century and was much more numerous than emigration to America – although many did eventually emigrate. The Millers, (then spelled Mueller), came from a village about 10 miles north of Bern Switzerland, called Zollikofen and were a part of the Reformed church there.
The earliest ancestor that has been documented is Johann Michael Mueller, who is believed to have been born in 1655, in the City of Zollikofen, Canton of Bern, Switzerland.
The Zollikofen church, above, shown inside today, built in 1306, still stands. Our cousin, the Reverend Richard Miller is, appropriately, standing in the pulpit.
Above, a view of the beautiful church from a distance and below, a street view thanks to Google maps street view.
It is likely that in the late 1680’s the Miller family along with perhaps other friends and relatives moved north along the Rhine River and settled in the Rhineland-Pfaltz area of southern Germany. They became part of the Steinwenden and Konken (Germany) Reformed parish churches and records of their respective families are recorded in the church records. The Steinwenden records began in 1684 and Konken in 1653, but the churches reach further back in time. There are other churches in the area whose records to not exist and those may have held other family records as well.
The Konken records include those of the Berchtoll family, including Hans Berchtol, whose daughter would marry the son of Johann Michael Miller (the first.)
Johann Michael Mueller married Irene Charitas, whose last name is unknown. That’s right, Charitas is NOT her last name, as is reflected universally on internet trees, but her middle name as recorded in church records, as was the custom of the time.
Cousin Reverend Richard Miller visited Zollikofen and provided the following information.
“On Friday, 04 October 1996, I was in Steinwenden and was entertained by the Burgermeister of Steinwenden. A television crew from Mainz came and interviewed me for a personal interest story of me coming back to the home of my ancestors, i.e., Johan Michael Mueller. Also present was genealogist Roland Paul of the Institue für Pfälzische Geschichte und Volkskünde located in Kaiserlautern. The Burgermeister of Steinwenden and the television station had asked Roland to research Johan Michael Müller, born 1692 in Steinwenden. The attached are two records which Roland gave me. He asserted that Michael’s mother’s maiden name is unknown, and that Irene Charitas is her first and middle name rather than first and maiden name.”
Irene may have been related to the Schlosser family, as there was a 1689 confirmation of Irene Charitas Schloser, daughter of Conrad Schlosser, of Steinwenden, if I’m reading this correctly.
At this time however, Irene Charitas was already married to Michael Mueller as they had their first child’s birth recorded in the church records in June of 1685, or earlier. They likely married in 1684. Their children were baptized in the Reformed church in Steinwenden, Germany, near Mannheim.
The bell tower of the original Steinwenden church is all that is left standing (1996) and is shown here.
Johann Michael Mueller and Irene Charitas Mueller had 6 children. Sadly, all of their children died other than Johann Michael Mueller who was the youngest, born October 5th, 1692. I can’t imagine the depth Irene’s grief at the deaths of her first 5 children – and her joy at the one that lived.
We don’t know where those children are buried, but my best guess would be the churchyard.
Steinwenden, Germany
The village of Steinwenden is shown below, photography courtesy of Richard Miller during his visit to the Miller homeland.
Irene may have been joyful about her son that lived, but her husband, Johann Michael, their father, died three years later on January 31, 1695, still a young man, at age 40.
Some genealogical records show that Irene died and Michael remarried to Anna Loysa Regina, but the church records indicate that all of Johann Michael Mueller’s children were born to Irene Charitas. The summary record, below, provided to Richard Miller when he visited Steinwenden in 1996 lists Irene Charitas (with no last name listed) as the mother for all 6 children born between 1685 and 1692.
Many times the people who were designated as Godparents were relatives of the father or mother of the children. Godparents at that time were extremely important, and the children were generally named after the Godparents. In the case of the death of the parents, which happened all too often, it was the Godparents who would raise the children. The Godparents of these children were Hans George Shoemaker and his wife, Mich. Stahl – I can’t tell if this is two people or three. The second is Abraham, Hans Berchtol, Hoffman. Third was Samuel Hoffman. Fourth is Maria Catherine. Fifth is Eva ?, Catherine, Samuel Shoemaker. Finally, the sixth child’s Godparents standing up with Johann Michael Mueller born on October 5, 1692 were Johann Michael Shoemaker, Hans Berchtol and wife.
Little did they know that Hans Berchtol’s daughter, then 4 years old, would one day marry this baby boy.
After Johann Michael’s death, his widow reportedly married Jacob Stutzman whose wife had died. However, there exists a great deal of confusion about who Jacob Stutzman married. In the Gene Miller book, he attributes Jacob Stutzman’s wife, Anna Loysa Regina as the widow of Johann Michael Mueller – but as we’ve seen – based on the church records, Johann Michael Miller’s wife was one Irene Charitas, not Anna Loysa Regina, at least as late as 1692. Perhaps Irene died and Johann Michael Miller remarried to Anna Loysa Regina before his death in 1695. This conflicting information may never be entirely resolved, at least not until the entire set of church records is transcribed and translated, in full, such that the various families can be reassembled. However, there were many little villages in this area and people didn’t always stay in one place.
Johann Michael Mueller, born in Switzerland in 1655, died in the Steinwenden German Reformed congregation on January 31, 1695, at the age of 40 years. His reported widow, Anna Loysa Regina Mueller remarried a Hans Jacob Stutsman of the Konken German Reformed Congregation on September 29, 1695. If this is accurate, and Anna Loysa Regina was the widow of Johann Michael Mueller, that would indicate that Irene Charitas died between January 1692 when her only child to survive was born and 1695 when her husband died – and with enough time for him to remarry. That could explain why they didn’t have another child in 1694 – perhaps she was dead or perhaps she and the child both died during childbirth. If this is the case, the only mother Johann Michael Mueller would have known was Anna Regina and the only father, her second husband Jacob Stutzman. No children are attributed to Johann Michael Mueller and Anna Loysa Regina in church records, although she did have children with Johann Jacob Stutzman..
The Pietist Movement
The Stutzman family was originally from the Lake Thun area in Switzerland, according to the book, “Jacob Stutzman, His Children and Grandchildren” by John Hale Stutesman, Jr. who reports that they fled from religious persecution to the welcoming Palatinate in Germany before 1700. Of course, this is also the area where the Mueller family originated as well.
Ironically, this is less than an hour away from where I lived in the summer of 1970 – one of the most stunningly beautiful areas I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing.
This drawing of Thun isn’t far from Zollikofen where the Miller family is first found. So it appears that the Mueller and Stutzman families were located in the same area of Switzerland. One might surmise that they were part of a group that migrated together to Germany.
“Thunersee” by Roland Zumbühl, Arlesheim
A beautiful view of Lake Thun today.
In Germany, later, the combined Miller/Stutzman family is found near Bad Durkheim where Johann Jacob Stutzmann was born on January 1, 1706, on the Weilacher Hof, near Hardenburg, son of the tenant farmer on the Weilacher Hof, Johann Jacob Stutzmann and his wife Regina Elisabetha.
Given that Johann Jacob Stutzman married Regina Elisabetha Mueller after the death of Johann Michael Mueller (the first), and in 1706 Jacob Stutzman’s wife’s name was recorded as Regina Elisabetha – it’s likely that Irene Charitas had died before 1695 when Johann Jacob Mueller died given that Johann Jacob Stutzman apparently married his widow. This makes Johann Jacob Stutzman (the second) born in 1706 a “step-brother” to Johann Michael Mueller (the second.) Said differently, Johann Michael Mueller’s step mother remarried after his father’s death and his step-mother and her new husband had a son, Johann Jacob Stutzman (the second.) This son and his “step-brother” Johann Michael Mueller were lifelong friends and companions – eventually immigrating to America together and moving in tandem across the frontier.
Many of the Swiss families had Pietist leanings. Some were Mennonite and eventually became Brethren, as did Johann Jacob Mueller (the second) and Johann Jacob Stutzman (the second.)
The Brethren sect itself began in 1708 in the village of Schwarzenau, in Wittgenstein, Germany with the rebaptism of eight people. The Brethren faith spread rapidly and it was only 11 years later that the first group of Brethren landed in Philadelphia.
It’s certainly possible that an entire group of Anabaptist leaning families relocated from Switzerland to the Bad Durkheim area in Germany. In 1714, the Miller family was in Krottelback, not far from Hardenburg.
The next step for these families, of course, was to safety in Holland, then on the ship Adventure in 1727 to America. Justin Replogle states that the Brethren in Holland had been in exile since 1720. It’s unlikely that Michael was among this group, because his son Philip Jacob was born in Germany in about 1726.
I surely would like to know the individual stories of the families involved and what prompted these decisions. What kinds of factors were involved? Did they know they would be kindly received when they relocated from Switzerland to Germany, then from Germany to Rotterdam and then from Rotterdam to Philadelphia, or was the future entirely unknown? Were they joining families who had already departed and were doing well in the new lands? What prompted the entire group of Brethren to depart – in fact causing the sect to die out in Europe? Were these families Brethren before they left, or did they convert after arriving in the US? We know the Bechtol family was Mennonite.
The 30 Years War may have had a lot to do with the decision to leave Switzerland. Germany was depopulated after the 30 Years War which ended in 1648, with some areas being entirely devastated. Overall, the population loss was from 25-40% with the Palatinate being particularly hard hit, losing 75 to 80% of the population. After the war, settlers from other part of Germany and Switzerland were invited to repopulate the area which included both Catholic and Lutheran (Protestant) churches.
According to the book, “Becoming German: The 1709 Palatine Migration to New York,” (pages 12-14), misery in this area wasn’t over yet. From 1688-1697, the War of the Palatine Succession brought French armies overrunning the German southwest, laying waste to vineyards, farmland and the regions cities and smaller towns. Mannheim was destroyed and Speyer stood uninhabited for 10 years. Farmland stood abandoned and German rulers sought to attract new settlers by offering tax concessions and religious toleration which specifically included Catholics, Lutherans, Mennonites and Jews.
This may have been part of the reason these Protestant families selected this area.
Colonies of religious dissidents moved to Germany from neighboring counties, in particular, Switzerland. In 1656 and 1657, more than 1000 Swiss moved to the Palatinate. In 1671, over 1600 Mennonites arrived from Bern. Portuguese Jews attracted by the elector’s concessions settled in Mannheim. Huguenot refugees followed as well.
Migration became a fact of life in this part of Germany. In one study, it was found that between 1593 and 1780, about half of one town’s citizens were not born there.
This area of Germany became extremely religiously diverse. In 1705, an edict called the Religionsdeklaration clarified the religious situation, unquestionably giving religious freedom to all individuals. Lutherans fell under the Reformed, as did other Protestant sects, which may be why we find both the Miller and Stutzman children baptized in Reformed or Lutheran churches. By this time, the pietists, an offshoot of the Lutherans, were calling for a more inward-looking and emotional faith than the established churches but were meeting privately, not able to establish open churches.
In 1675, Philipp Jacob Spener, a Lutheran pastor in Frankfurt encouraged his followers to create small, private groups to read and discuss the Bible. He didn’t intend for those groups to leave the established churches, but they formed what they called conventicles which further split the already fractured religious communities in Germany. Pietists become very closely bound within their own group, and the pietist groups throughout Germany tended to bind together tightly as well, between villages which weren’t spaced very far apart, forming a network.
What were these early Brethren people like?
To begin with, they didn’t care much about official clergy and buildings. They preferred to hear their neighbor farmer preach who farmed the other 6 days a week, gathered in his barn. The word congregation did not necessarily mean a stand-alone church building, it may have meant only a gathering of like-minded people.
Pietists did not stress the intellectual side of Christianity. They emphasized the literal text of the Bible and didn’t worry about theory. The community stressed humility, work and service to others. The Brethren were plain people, pacifists, remaining aloof during the worldliness of political office, military service, oaths, litigation and filing anything in court or at the courthouse, unfortunately including deeds and marriages.
The Brethren practiced shunning of church members and even their children who did things they did not approve of. Alexander Mack Jr., the son of the founder of the Brethren church shunned both of his daughters. One for marrying outside the faith and because the marriage “was performed with a license.” The second, who was shunned to the point where the family would not even eat with her, was shunned for doing something we’ll have to surmise, but it was said that the “sin was not so great because they had been engaged never to leave each other.” An entire Brethren congregation shunned another young woman because she sat in the lap of a man who was trying to force her into immorality, for an hour, pretending to be asleep.” Her father argued that she had not actually committed fornication, and left the congregation, taking several members with him.
Church historian Morgan Edwards summarized Brethren like this in 1770: “They use great plainness of language and dress, like the Quakers; and like them will neither swear nor fight. The will not go to law; nor take interest for the money they lend. They commonly wear their beards…They have the Lord’s supper…love feasts, washing of feet, kiss of charity…use the trine immersion…as the party kneels down to be baptized…” (Replogle)
We see this same culture in the Brethren, Mennonite and Amish, then as now.
The area where I grew up in Indiana had a well-established Amish, Mennonite and Brethren community. They tended to live in the same area, but they did not intermix, or at least not much. As much as they looked “alike” to those of us who were not members of those religions, their differences, to them, were chasms, especially the adoption of modern technology and conveniences like electricity, farm equipment and automobiles.
The Amish, typically called the “Old Order” were the most restrictive, not embracing any modern technology at all. These were and are the horse and buggy families.
The Mennonites were in the middle. They would ride in or drive cars, but they had to be very plain – always black, nothing shiny, no hubcaps or radios. The local car dealership always had to special order a group of Mennonite cars.
The Brethren were the least restrictive. Their men dressed almost normally, although some still had beards. Their women often still wore prayer bonnets, but their clothes weren’t always black. Their homes were plain, but did include modern conveniences. However, in our family, one will includes instructions for the man’s gravestone not to be highly polished. They were known as highly conservative “plain people.”
This photo is of my mother’s Brethren grandparents, Hiram Bauke Ferverda and Evaline Louise Miller, and their family taken about 1918. Other than their relatively “plain” dress, you would never know they were Brethren. Their son, third from right in the front row is also wearing a uniform, having served in WWI – something VERY un-Brethren. In this photo, the women are not wearing prayer bonnets, but mother said that she distinctly remembers this woman, her grandmother, wearing a prayer cap. My mother’s father, John Whitney Ferverda (b1882) is the second from right, back row.
This photo taken about 18 years earlier, around 1900, of Evaline Louise Miller, middle, and her parents, Margaret Lentz Whitehead and John David Miller looks much more typically Brethren. The men have beards and the women are wearing darker colors and prayer bonnets, covering their hair.
My mother’s family was Brethren until my grandfather, gasp, married a Lutheran woman and because there was no Brethren or Lutheran church in the small town where they lived, they chose to become Methodist! Oh, the scandal! With that religiously “mixed” marriage ended at least a 7 generations long line of Pietists who became Brethren, reaching back hundreds of years into Germany and Switzerland – back into the mists of time so far that we no longer have records, only the knowledge of how strongly those people must have felt about their religion to willingly suffer the persecution and displacement that they withstood.
I’m suspecting they literally rolled over in their graves to know that one of their descendants married outside the faith and became something un-Pietist.
The Miller DNA
One of our Miller participants has tested to 111 markers and taken the Big Y test. Although our haplogroup is a subgroup of typically European R1b, we have only Miller matches at 12 through 111 markers, except at 25 and 37 markers where we have a match to a Morgan man whose ancestor, Morgan Morgan, hails from Wales and was born in 1688.
The Big Y DNA results, a test which not only checks for all known SNPs, but scans for new and unknown mutations as well, shows that our Miller participant most closely matches a man from Bulgaria. In this case, the word close does not mean in a genealogical timeframe. This match reaches back before the advent of surnames, as there are 3 known SNP differences and only 58 of 100 novel variants or previously unknown SNPs. This means that our common ancestor with this man is probably someplace around 3,000 or 4,000 years ago. Our next closest match is from Austria and from about as long ago. These are followed closely by three English surnames and a Spanish surname.
The Miller terminal SNP, which defines our haplogroup, is called R-Z2106.
The Y haplotree looks like a branching tree or a pedigree chart on steroids. Our twig, R-Z2106 is a part of a larger stick which is a part of a larger branch, etc.
Each of these branches becomes increasingly smaller and more granular. The 100 or so novel variants found in the Miller DNA will also become branches someday, so there may be several more. As DNA mutates, new novel variants, which are unnamed SNPs because they have just been discovered, continue to occur every few generations in each line. This means that our own personal branch of the tree may have several SNPs or mutations that no one else has. Whatever valley our ancestors may have been isolated in hundreds or thousands of years ago, perhaps during the last glacial maximum, may hold many men with the same mutations that today will become a small subgroup of a haplogroup – like Z2106. We don’t know the history, but by looking at groups of men with these same mutations, and estimating when the mutation happened, and pairing that with what we know historically and geologically was happening in the world at that time, we can piece some semblance of our own deep personal history together.
This is a map of the distribution of haplogroup L23. It’s estimated that L23 occurred in the first male about 7000 years ago.
Generally, the darker or most saturated regions are the origins of the haplogroup. L23 is interesting because it is typically not found in high frequencies in Europe, typically less than 5% or haplogroup R, except in Switzerland’s Upper Rhone Valley where it is found at 27%. That could be a clue for us.
This same paper, “Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe” by Haak et al, 2015, states that there is virtually no haplogroup R1b found in Europe before the period beginning about 4500 years ago in the Late Neolithic and Bronze Ages, and that this R1b found in these Russian burials appears to be mixed with Near East (Anatolian) DNA as well. This implies, of course, that one of the migration routes to Europe was north through Russia, and one was crossing at present day Istanbul and going through the Baltic.
Subgroup Z2103 is referred to as the Balkan and Asian branch of the L23 tree. Z2103 is found in a high percentage of Armenian men today.
Armenia is, of course, dead center in the middle of the migration path from the Near East to the Russian steppes, shown on the map above with a red balloon.
Referencing the Armenian DNA project, two men within that project carry the R-Z2106 SNP – the same one the Miller men carry. SNP Z2106 is exceedingly rare. I’ve been able to locate less than a dozen samples.
However, there are 21 men who carry the Z2103 SNP and 14 men who carry the Z2109 SNP in the Armenian project. Another 2109 SNP is found in Iraq and one in Germany.
This map shows what was occurring in the Balkan region about 4500 years ago.
In 2015, six graves were excavated near Samara, Russia, shown on the map below, that represent the Yamna culture and of those, four carried the mutation Z2103 which is estimated to have been born about 6000 years ago, as are SNPs Z2109 and Z2106.
SNPs Z2106 and Z2109 were not reported in the ancient burials, but we don’t know if they were tested for or not.
These men of the Yamna culture lived between 2700 and 3300 years ago (BCE). We share a common ancestor with these men. Where and when is the question that remains.
It is in the history of these maps, these peoples and our DNA that the story of our ancestry is told. We’re still trying to put the pieces together, but looking at these maps, and our SNPs and novel variants, we know that our ancestors were first found in Switzerland in contemporary records, but their history extends back into Eastern Europe and back to Anatolia before that. They may have moved into Europe with the waves of farmers from that region, or they may have arrived from the Russian steppes. Given where our other SNPS, Z2103 and Z2109 are (and aren’t) found, I’m betting that they migrated from Anatolia across the Balkan region into eastern Europe as part of the migration of the European Neolithic farmer culture.
None of this is cast exactly in concrete – more like in jello molds. We continue to make discoveries and learn every day in this emerging field. However, what we do know is exciting and tantalizing and every puzzle piece we find adds to the story of our Mueller family.
Wouldn’t Johann Michael Mueller be surprised to know the secrets his DNA shared with his irreverent Methodist descendants! But Johann Michael, take heart, because there are still many Miller Brethren families. In fact, we even have a Miller-Brethren DNA project to help sort and reconstruct those families!
If you descend from a Brethren Miller family, you are most welcome to join.
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This entry was posted in Big Y, Y DNA and tagged 52 Weeks of Ancestors, Examples by Roberta Estes. Bookmark the permalink.
79 thoughts on “Johann Michael Mueller the First (1655-1695), Pietist Refugee, 52 Ancestors #97”
Karen Parker on November 9, 2015 at 12:25 am said:
Gorgeous column, Roberta. The church record says that Irene Charitas and Anna Ursula are Conrad Schlosser’s daughters.
robertajestes on November 9, 2015 at 12:30 am said:
Can you translate that entire entry for me? I don’t speak German.
Karen Parker on November 9, 2015 at 9:51 pm said:
Auf Ostern means “at Easter.”
u. is the abbreviation for und, meaning “and.”
Tochter with an umlaut over the o, means “daughters.” (If there’s no umlaut of the o in Tochter, then it’s singular, “daughter.”)
von means “from.” So it’s:
“1689 at Easter
Irene Charitas and Anna Ursula, Conrad Schlosser’s daughters from Steinwinden”
In case you’re interested, in the entries below the ones for Easter, “Auf Weynachten” means “at Christmas,” and “Auf Pfingsten” means “at Pentacost.”
BURTON REYNOLDS on November 9, 2015 at 2:01 am said:
Dear Roberta, This is a terrific post!!! It strongly applies to research I’ve been performing relative to my R-L20 origins.
One interactive visualization tool I’ve also found useful in conjunction with the Eupedia Haplogroup migration maps is the following: http://geacron.com/en/?v=m&lang=en&z=5&x=9.2505048314411&y=49.449547581132&nd=8&d=963A1034A1330A1405A1548A1660A1737A1790A1806&di=890&tm=r&ct=0&ly=yyyyyyy&fi=700&ff=1820&sp=131A102A624A369A367A621A623A622&e=0A0A0A0A0A0A0A0&rp=0A0A0A0A0A0A0A0&re=0A0A0A0A0A0A0A0&nv=1A1A1A1A1A1A1A1
Or, in a tiny URL: http://wp.me/P1ehbH-v5
I set the time to 890 which shows the Franks in Italy. The map is very interesting and informative to illustrate where and when particular migrations occurred. The time periods can be advanced or retarded per the era of interest.
Their more general URL is http://geacron.com/home-en/?&sid=GeaCron344734
Thanks again, Ciao! ~ Burton Reynolds (F329104) Alexandria, Virginia
Donna on November 9, 2015 at 3:01 am said:
You said, “The Allemannians (German speaking) moved into what is the Middleland area of Switzerland. The Alemannians were an agricultural people, but pagan and barbarian. The Franks who lived in central Germany and who also moved into Switzerland conquered the Alemanni tribe and after a struggle, “Christianized” the people and set the moral code for the next generations.” ….This was really interesting to me. I have “grandparents” surnamed Alleman, Allemonge, Aloman, etc. Jacob, born in Switzerland c1701, had children born in France and ended up in Pennsylvania. Your information helps explains some of the movement of my own ancestors who evidently came through French Alsace and German-speaking areas of Switzerland. There don’t appear to be many who actually ended up with a surname referencing their Allemannian origin. I copied a quote that said, “only foreigners called the Alemanni by that name”. I wish I knew how my ancestors came to carry the surname !
…..As usual, an interesting post. D
robertajestes on November 9, 2015 at 3:57 am said:
How interesting!
Marianne on November 10, 2015 at 12:56 pm said:
There are French surname like that, Langlois (the English man), Lebreton (the Brittany man), Litalien (the Italian); or closer to inhabitant names like Normand (from Normandie), Picard (from Picardie), Briard (from Brie), Gascon (from Gascogne), Provençal (from Provence); even cities.
Why the origin stick to some as last name and not to others? Who knows. It was probably the thing that stand out the most about your ancestor.
Mark Deutsch on November 11, 2015 at 4:18 am said:
The study of names, particularly surnames, called anthroponymy, is an incredibly fascinating one. My own, shortened from Deutscher, is the same toponymic use of a country of origin when surnames first evolved. It’s very common in many countries and in many languages. But my favorite surname usage is found in Spain where genealogists must have a wonderful time tracing families that insist on hyphenating both parents’ names or using the “y” to combine surnames, as well as the toponymic article “de”. We Americans could never handle so many names, one reason we shortened “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula” to simply Los Angeles!
As I may have mentioned before, the French word for Germany is Allemagne, and the Spanish is Alemania, clearly derived form the Alemanni.; and the German word for France is Frankreich, realm of the Franks. So Alleman as a surname should not be uncommon. I happen to know someone from Cuba with that name.
Great article, Roberta. Thanks
Just as an FYI: South of Hutchinson, KS is a pocket of Miller’s I am loosely related to through my maternal line. Most have left the Amish group there but when I lived in the area I believe there were still quite a few Amish Miller families. There was also an unusually high number of dwarfs in that population. The closest towns are Yoder and Haven. I have no idea if any investigation into their ancestors has been done. D
Marci Bowman on November 9, 2015 at 3:36 am said:
Thank you SOOO much for this lovely gift Cousin Roberta. Johann Jacob Mueller is my 7th great grandfather > Johann Michael Mueller > Barbara Miller Garber. The photos, dialog and records are a real treasure..
My 2nd great grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Bowman (Bauman), was a real black sheep – he was a good Brethren until he went away to Bible College, converted and became a Methodist minister in 1852.
OMG – another Methodist!!!!!!!
Marci,
Do we have a DNA match? Are you at GedMatch? I have several kits there who are Miller descendants and I’d like to see.
My GedMatch # is A072539. I match with William P. Campbell on CH 2.
wanda muncey gant on November 9, 2015 at 4:26 am said:
Your work is out of my compreension range and I really admire it. As alwayys, your stories are exceptional.
Liz Walker on November 9, 2015 at 4:03 pm said:
Great article. I love it when you write about my ancestors, too. Johann Michael Miller was my 8th great grandfather. I have a photo very similar to yours, of a group of Brethren that includes my 2nd great grandfather, Amos Miller and his siblings with their spouses ( most from the Cupp family).
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ourfamilyconnections/millerbrethren.html
robertajestes on November 9, 2015 at 4:26 pm said:
Where is this picture of your Amos Miller taken?
I don’t know for sure where it was taken but they lived in North Manchester, Indiana.
robertajestes on November 9, 2015 at 11:32 pm said:
I’m assuming you have this photo?? http://www.frontierfamilies.net/family/Miller/C6/G3ABM.htm
Liz Walker on November 10, 2015 at 1:21 am said:
I didn’t see a reply button to your last question-but yes, I have the photo. My aunt may know where it was taken. I can check.
robertajestes on November 10, 2015 at 1:48 am said:
Hmmm, should have been a reply button. I was just curious as to where the family lived and you answered that.
Elizabeth Selandia on November 9, 2015 at 4:29 pm said:
This is your best so far!!
Love the DNA maps.
Turns out my grandfather Orrin Welch, grandson of Jeremiah S. Welch (of Berlin, PA) and Eliza Mason Welch (daughter of William Temple Thomson Mason I or II, that is the mystery??), has a great grandfather John Welch, (of PA for birthing 7 of his 11 kids, but who knows really from where??) AND a great grandmother Elisabeth Glattfelder, daughter of the famous Swiss immigrant Samuel Glattfelder of Glattfelden, outside of Zurich, about 30-minutes by train.
So the Swiss info appreciated, thanks. See attached obit for JS Welch, copy of the marriage license (escaping the fire!). A photo of Orrin and next is of him, wife Elizabeth–mtDNA H63 tested by FTDNA–and me, Mary Elizabeth, named for both grandmothers, last photo.
Donna Hillis Crosby on November 9, 2015 at 7:46 pm said:
This is also my family I would believe. My mother’s grandparents, Wilhemina Ewy and John Merk arrived in America with their parents after 1870. They were born in Neighoff and Galencia (now Russia) in the 1860’s. Their direct family ancestral surnames are: Shragg, Backman, Bergthold, Rupp, Bender, Hiestand and Mueller. When just a child she told me her story and wrote it out for me:
Her earliest known ancestors came from Berne Switzerland and followers of John Calvin’s teachings. Genocide became so severe that her ancestors them moved to what is now Bavaria/Germany. About this point in time I believe that the families split with some (including the early family group that included Rupps) and came to America. My Merk/Ewy line instead moved to what is now Russia (then the Austrian/Ottoman Empire) where they were promiced by the Czar that IF they would come and develop the Galencia/Nieghoff area from a wasteland into farmland that would support cattle, the men would not have to serve in the Russian army.
So my direct line went from Bavaria area in Germany to this area in Russia. As agreed, these now Mennonites did enhance this area, and it became a profitable area as agreed. But the promise made to these Mennonites changed and once again Genocide began again. The American government decided to rescue these folks and my great grandparents, then children escaped in boats at nightfall and were then taken to a port where they were boarded onto ships coming to America.
They had agreed to go to Mankato, Minn. and work for folks to help pay for the costs to bring their families to America. They were crammed into steerage, and one night during a ‘dreadful storm’ Wilhelminna (Minnie)’s mother, Elizabeth Bergthold-Ewy was thrown out of bed and into a heavy beam…her injuries were so severe that within three months after their arrival here in America,
Grandmother Merk also told me the story of their entrance to America: they of course had ‘no papers and her father was extremely worried that they would be sent BACK…but when they had to pass through the entrance gate, one of the ship personnel said, “Mennonite given passage by our Government..” Grandma Merk told me that he father began to cry…she said NO ONE ever loved America MORE than her parents!
If anyone want to know more details about the information that I do have, please contact me.
For the earlier group of these folks who arrived here in say the 1720’s or before, here are some EXCELLENT data that I highly recommend: “The History of the Griom Family of Pennsylvania and its Associated Families” by William Gabriel Long and specifically the chapter on the Pennsylvania German. This chapter provides an excellent history of these same families. Note in particular the name Conrad Weiser who played such an important role in the lives of these early folks.
Additionally, one Johann Casper Stover kept excellent records. He arrived on one of the few ships that has a preserved ship log, the James Goodwill and includes the Grim passengers. IF any of you had ancestors from this time in PA, look for the records of Rev. John Casper Stoever, Jr.
One final thought, it was through Stoever’s work that I was able to understand the naming conventions of these folks: they named all of their children for the same Saints or John for the boys and Mary for the girls for example. Then the middle name was a secular name and each child was known by this name..BUT the only times that the legal first name was used was for legal records…that means birth, marriage, and death..so about the only way one can determine which John Rupp you descend (for example), you have to find the names of all of the sons’ wives and then just pray that brothers didn’t marry sisters of another Mennonite family!
Donna Hillis Crosby
Chris Schuetz on November 10, 2015 at 1:52 am said:
Loved it. The fusion of family and social history.
Hope it encourages more people to read up on the events happening where their ancestors came from at the time they left. Very rarely do our ancestors leave records telling us why they left, but the pressing issues of the time are strong forces that must have weighed on the minds or our forebears, even if it was something else that proved the final straw.
I get visual flashes with spelling errors, so when your chart showing dates of Haplogroup formation mentioned L21 being created in “caucus” I suddenly saw a smoke-filled room of politicians puffing cigars, or whatever else they smoked back then, and discussing tribal matters.
And where better for a gene to mutate?
The other one I have amusement from presently is the wonderful term Genealogically Significant Time. In my country GST means Sales Tax, so there can be some disconnect coming from family history to the political news of the day.
Thanks for the unintended humor.
Evelyn on November 10, 2015 at 1:59 am said:
Thanks Roberta.
I have Miller, I have Brethren, Germany and Switzerland to Pennsylvania, New Jersey and finally Botetourt Co. VA.
Thanks so much for the article. I seldom find Brethren information.
Evelyn Davenport
susan whitten on November 10, 2015 at 4:31 pm said:
Very interesting Roberta. I believe your Millers were on my husband’s side. We have the Morgan Lewis Morgan you mentioned. He was b.01 Nov 1688 in Glamorgan, Wales, d.17 Nov 1766 in Va. He was s/o James Morgan and Sarah Prythereth, His sibs were Cadwalader b. c 1670 Gwenfel, Merionethshire, Wales, d. c 1711 Merion TWP, Chester, PA and John b.c 1670 Wales. d. c 1743 in Richard TWP, Bucks, PA
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Cheryl Miller on November 29, 2015 at 8:05 pm said:
I wish I could say that I understand most of the information you put up here but I don’t. I enjoy your work and need to spend more time on figuring things out. What I do have is our oldest sons DNA on GedMatch kit A313736 and his father, my husband descends from Johan Michael Miller. I have not had my husband tested, maybe I should to that. My husband is 6th great grandson of Johan Michael Miller.
robertajestes on November 29, 2015 at 8:07 pm said:
You should test your husband because your son only got half of the DNA of each parent. So your husband would have twice as much of the ancestral DNA than your son does. What is your husband’s line from Michael?
My husbands father was Albert Ringgold Miller, s/o Hiram Conrad Miller, s/o Jacob Miller, s/o Jacob Miller, s/o Daniel Miller, s/o Lodowich (Lewis) Miller, s/o Johan Michael & Susanna Bechtol
Just ordered my husbands DNA Y67 test kit from familytree DNA. I guess some time next year we will know the connection for sure.
Exciting!!!!
Cheryl Miller on January 30, 2016 at 4:38 pm said:
I apparently have the results of my husbands DNA test. His group is R-M269. I think I ordered it incorrectly because it has my name. I would like to upload to GedMatch but don’t see how to add it.
robertajestes on January 30, 2016 at 5:02 pm said:
You can easily change the name on his kit by signing on and then clicking on manage personal information on the left hand side of your page. As for GedMatch, go to http://www.gedmatch.com and follow the instructions. To download your raw data file from Family Tree DNA, again, sign on and click on Family Finder on the myFTDNA tab, then on Download Raw Data. Follow the GedMatch instructions as to which files to download.
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Eva on January 14, 2016 at 10:07 pm said:
My father is 96 years old. He has one son, who has one son, who has one son! (I’m just a “lowly” daughter.) We are listed in Mason’s Miller family book. What advantage is there to this DNA Y67 test? Is it just to prove we are (Johann Michael) Miller’s descendants?
robertajestes on January 15, 2016 at 3:15 am said:
Yes, the Y would prove he is a Johann Michael Miller descendant. It might also document any direct line mutations in his line. Which son does he descend from. You might want to have his autosomal DNA tested, because autosomal is divided in half every generation, so he had more “Miller” DNA than you or any of his children do. That might be very useful for you to have the future, and you can’t get it once he’s gone.
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Carol Hodges on October 29, 2016 at 1:32 pm said:
Roberta, this was very interesting to me because my son’s ancestors are unknown past 1850. I had a Y37 test done and he has 2 matches at 25 and 6 matches at 37 and none of them have the same last name nor his last name, Moore. He has a lot of matches to people with Duer, Rhoner, Beichlin and Bectol as ancesters and Mueller also pops up a lot. His haplogroup is M-173 which I now see is not very helpful. I think that I need to upgrade his test to at least a 67. I would value your opinion about this.
robertajestes on October 29, 2016 at 6:28 pm said:
You may pick up additional surname matches. But you won’t know if you don’t do the upgrade. In some cases it reduces the matches. You never know the outcome.
Jeffrey Joe Miller on May 23, 2017 at 4:28 am said:
Fascinating information … thank you for publishing it.
I’m nearly certain that Johann Michael Mueller was my 8th grandfather, tracing back from my father’s father, Esta Aldine Miller.
I purchased Ancestry.com’s DNA package a few years back but it didn’t include any haplogroup information, and my DNA page on Ancestry.com doesn’t have any useful information though I was able to download a DNA “raw data” document which is a very long list of numbers that make no sense to me … $100.00 seems pretty steep for two paragraphs of general nonsense about my “genetic community” and a list of raw data that I can’t use … but it is what it is. 🙂 If it would be useful to anyone I’d be happy to share it.
robertajestes on May 24, 2017 at 1:01 am said:
You can upload your Ancestry file to both GedMatch and Family Tree DNA to find additional matches. The Ancestry file is only really useful if you attach your DNA results to your tree so Ancestry can help you find common ancestors with your matches.
Brenda on May 30, 2017 at 9:35 pm said:
Jeffrey Joe Miller we just traced back my moms line back to Micheal Muellar He’d be her 9th grandfather. Her 3rd grandmother Elizabeth Miller, Daughter of Isaac Miller, Married Clement Harris, which are descendants of Germany.
My Miller tree descends as follows:
– Jakob Muller b. 1585 (married Frau C Muller)
– his son, Johann Jacob Mueller, b. 1632 (married to Huber S. Muller)
– his son, Johann M Miller b. 1665 (married to Irene Charitas)
– his son, Johann M Miller b. 1692 (married to Sussanna Bechtol)
– his son, Lodowich Miller b. 1724 (married to Anna Barbara Meyer)
– his son, Elder Daniel Miller b. 1752 (married to Anna Garber)
– his son, Elder Daniel Miller II b 1784 (married to Anna Hoover)
– his son, Elder Joseph Miller b. 1815 (married to Catherine Bowman
– his son, Elder Issac E Miller b. 1849 (married to Rachel Miller)
– his son, Esta Aldine Miller b. 1879) (married to Ottia May Miller)
– his son, Isaac Joseph Miller (my father) b. 1918 (married to Betty L Fiskum)
This is all fascinating … I’m searching on Ancestry.com to see where your line and mine split off.
We split with the sons of Michael Miller who died in 1771.
Brenda on June 1, 2017 at 3:01 am said:
Jeffrey We split at Johann M Miller B 1692
My mom is from Phillip Miller’s line.
Jeffrey Joe Miller on May 23, 2017 at 7:08 pm said:
I forgot to mention that my GetMatch kit number is A243501, if this is helpful.
I looked you up on Gedmatch and it looks like we don’t share any DNA. But you may with my mom. Or her Brother. I am getting my moms 23andme done next month.
Cheryl Miller on June 22, 2017 at 5:29 pm said:
I’m just getting back to reading more of these and my husband’s kit T058365 matches but 7.5 generations back.
robertajestes on June 23, 2017 at 1:42 am said:
In your case, if you haven’t yet tested your husband’s Y DNA, that would be the place to begin to be sure that he does indeed match the known Michael Miller Y DNA line. If you’ve already done this, just disregard:) If not, you can order from Family Tree DNA on the sidebar link and then join the Miller Brethren project.
Hi Roberta. My name is Brenda. My mom Is a descendant of Micheal Muellar. He is her 9th generation grandfather. Micheal Muellar married and had Micheal JR he married and had Phillip, Phillip married and had David, David married and had Micheal, Micheal married and had Isaac, Isaac married and had Elizabeth, Elizabeth Miller married a Harris and had Clement, Clement married and had Sherman, Sherman Harris married and had My grandfather and mom’s father James Harris. This was a really cool find for her to see where her roots came from on her fathers side. I have gotten my 23andme done and have matched DNA with several Millers on 23andme and GedMatch. My GedMatch code is M903419. I look forward to speaking with you. You can also email me at mommieof4kiddies@gmail.com. This was a very exciting find for my mom today.
robertajestes on May 30, 2017 at 9:20 pm said:
There is another gentleman who believes he descends from Michael Jr. Can I ask where your Michael Jr. is found? I wonder if you two are looking at the same man.
Johann Michael Mueller Jr. Jr.
Birth 05 OCT 1692 • Steinwenden, Reinland, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany
Death 1771 • Hagerstown, Washington, Maryland, USA
We linked it back to Johann Micheal Mueller but were stuck until we found your article today.
robertajestes on May 30, 2017 at 11:39 pm said:
I asked the wrong question. I think you and I may be related in the past few generations. I’m not sure I’m following your tree correctly. My line is Michael who died in 1771 in Washington Co., Maryland. His son, Philip Jacob Miller who married Magdalena surname unknown, his son Daniel Miller who married Elizabeth Ulrich, his son David Miller who married Catharina Schaeffer, his son John David Miller who married Elizabeth Lentz (maiden name) Whitehead (first married name), daughter Evaline Miller who married Hiram Ferverda, his son John Ferverda was my grandfather. Where does our line diverge. Has your mother DNA tested and if so, at which companies?
We are discovering just how big the Miller tree is because several men married more then once and they had big families.
We are also looking at how John Miller fits into the tree. We found a match on 23andme with the 3 grandaughter of Sarah Elizabeth miller who is the 4th grandaughter of John Miller. I am not sure how John is connected into our tree but the DNA match between her and I show me that it’s there. I have dominant Miller Harris DNA because that is what I have higher percentages with on Gedmatch and 23andme. Vs. My dads side where I share less percentage.
Birth 1680 • Rappahannock, Essex, Virginia, United States
Death 20 DEC 1743 • Essex, Virginia, United States
Sarah Elizabeth Miller Daughter of John H Miller Rev.
Birth 27 JUL 1851 • Milam, Williamson, Texas
Death 16 FEB 1935 • Santa Cruz, California, USA
It looks like Phillip is the father of both Daniel and David Miller. David Miller is my mothers 6th grandfather.
Birth 01 DEC 1757 • Frederick, Frederick, Maryland, USA
Death 18 AUG 1845 • Randolph, Montgomery, Ohio, United States
Who is the father of Micheal Miller
Birth 10 MAY 1784 • Washington County, Maryland
Death 18 DEC 1856 • ,Montgomery Co.,Ohio
Who is the father of Isaac Miller
Birth Aug 26, 1846 Ohio Death Nov 21 1935 Missouri
who is the father of Elizabeth Miller who Married Clement Harris my moms Great Grandfather
Clement and Elizabeth had Sherman my mom’s father James Harris dad.
My Gedmatch is M701514
And my FTDna is B198016
robertajestes on June 1, 2017 at 3:12 am said:
Yes, Philip Jacob did have sons Daniel and David. David’s home still stands in Montgomery County, Ohio, along with the family cemetery.
That would be really cool to see. It’s awesome to link all this together for my mom.
Hi Roberta, would that be Michael, brother of Lodowich, Christian, Jeramiah, Maria, Fannie, etc?
(I don’t see a ‘reply’ button in your comment so I replied here.
My ancestor is Philip Jacob, son of Michael who died in 1771. Philip Jacob is the brother to Lodowich. The only proven children of Michael who died in 1771 are as follows:
Hans (probably Johann) Peter Mueller, baptized on January 19, 1715, at Konken, Germany. We don’t know if this child lived to adulthood. If so, he would probably have married when the family was living in Chester Co, PA. He may be John Miller below.
Lodowich Miller born 1724 or earlier in Germany. Migrated with his parents and lived in or near Hanover, PA and Hagerstown, MD before marrying Barbara, surname unknown, and migrating to Rockingham Co., VA about 1782 where he likely died in 1792.
Philip Jacob Miller born about 1726 in Germany. Migrated with his parents and lived near Hanover, York Co., PA. Inherited land from his father in present day Washington County, MD near Maugensville. Married Magdalena, probably in York County, who was reported to be a Rochette. He remained in Frederick County until 1796 when he, along with his children, migrated to Campbell County, KY where he died in 1799.
John Miller inherits part of Ash Swamp from Michael in 1765 and lived there until he died in 1795, likely being buried on his own land on a 50 by 50 foot cemetery plot, now lost to time. He may be Hans Peter Mueller born in 1715.
Hans Michael Miller is given money to purchase land.
Michael Miller Junior is given land.
“The only proven children of Michael who died in 1771 are as follows:”
That’s interesting … Ancestry shows 14 siblings. I’ve wondered how accurate Ancestry is. I’m glad my ancestor (Lodowich) is one of the proven.
I’m seeing on Ancestry that Lodowich married Anna Barbara Meyer (1734-1808) … daughter of Johann Georg Maier and Barbara Kingery … for what’s it’s worth.
Ancestry trees are more often wrong than right. That’s one reason I’m writing these articles.
jackie Brewer on June 21, 2017 at 8:42 pm said:
I am of the ‘newer’ Miller family….my grandfather, George, was born in 1881, he is the son of Marcus born 1868. I have been unable to find a death date for him. He was the son of William born 1834 and also, no death date. William was the son of David, 1809-1898 and then on up the line ( or down) to Johann Michael Miller 1655-1695.
Brenda Sheehan on September 29, 2017 at 7:12 am said:
Thank you for your detailed work on these lines! I had done a bit of research a few years ago on these lines. In preparation for taking my adult kids to Berne, IN soon, I was reviewing and pleasantly surprised to see your post. My mother was raised Church of the Brethren (Darke and Montgomery Co OH) Johanne Michael Muller, Stephen Ulrich and the Greib/ Cripes are all my lines too through Phillip Jacob’s son Daniel and his daughter Elizabeth Poe Miller. It is so important to know our history and to know it in context! Having done this for my father’s side and in process on my mother’s side, I know the time investment that it takes! Great Job! I am appreciative of you and cousin Rev Richard Miller sharing with the rest of us – and love the pictures inserted. A couple of us grand kids on my line are also in ministry. I wonder how many there might be among those who descend from these Swiss ancestors. Brenda S.
Roberta Estes on September 29, 2017 at 12:59 pm said:
That’s an interesting question. I suspect probably a great many.
Mary Ann on December 23, 2017 at 10:54 pm said:
I really enjoy receiving your e-mails, Roberta! This time it was especially interesting as Johann Michael Miller is my 8th great grandfather. YES, HELLO COUSIN!! 🙂 I’m a direct descendant of his son, Ludowich Miller. My mother has a strong Church of the Brethren connection on her mother’s side of the family, which I have found quite interesting. The main surnames in her particular Brethern line are Garber, Miller, Erbaugh, and Funk.
I’m going to go back and read your information again as there’s so much good stuff in this article. Thanks for all you do as it really does bring to life where we came from in so many different ways. Amazing stories…
Roberta Estes on December 23, 2017 at 11:08 pm said:
You’re right, they are amazing. I just wish they had left us a journal!!!
Eva on January 5, 2018 at 3:16 am said:
I have a question regarding the Miller DNA test. Is it the “swab the cheek” kind or “fill to the line with saliva”. I may be able to get my 98 year old father to allow me to swab, but doubt he will spit in a tube. Thanks. (We are Michael, Lodowich, Jacob)
Roberta Estes on January 5, 2018 at 3:41 am said:
It’s the swab the cheek kind. The link to Family Tree DNA is on the sidebar of this blog and you want the Family Finder test, unless his surname is Miller. In that case, if the surname is Miller, you want the Family Finder test AND (at least) the 37 marker Y DNA test.
Desiree Estrada on October 11, 2018 at 6:38 pm said:
I’m pretty sure the Morgan man you speak of is my family my dads direct male line goes Miller married Morgan, Miller married Miller, then two more generations of Miller marrying Morgan. If you can please email me with more information on your findings
Josee Bilodeau on October 28, 2018 at 1:27 pm said:
The great-grand-mother of my mother is Evelina Miller born 10 Novermber 1856. Between 1870 and 1880 she married Jules Vachon, a man from St-Frederic de Beauce, Quebec, Canada. They only had one child named Cleophas (Clifford) Vachon borned around 1880. My mother heard that her great-grand-mother had German roots. In each census after 1891, Evelina speaks French and English, such as her son Cleophas and her husband Jules which means they probably met each other in U.S.A where Jules was working… My mother is now 91 years old. She passed a DNA test with Ancestry without significant results… If someone can help me to find the marriage of Evelina Miller and Jules Vachon it would be great.
Josee Bilodeau on November 6, 2018 at 6:43 pm said:
Jules vachon, the husband of Evelina Miller, worked in Lewiston, Maine in 1874 and in Willaimson port, Pensylvania in 1874. According to Canadian Census, his son Cleophas was born in 1879. So… we are pretty sure the Vachon-Miller family leaved in USA between 1868 and 1891… Anyone can help me to find the marriage of Evelina Miller and Jules Vachon?!
Pingback: Muller, Ringeisen and Stutzman Families of Schwarzenmatt, Switzerland – 52 Ancestors #221 | DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy
Jim on September 20, 2020 at 1:20 am said:
Hi Roberta, I ran across this page after taking a Y-DNA test through FTDNA. Please email me! Thanks.
Pingback: Heintzman Muller and the Mystery of the Boltigen Choir Court Window – 52 Ancestors #313 | DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy
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Alibaba’s Ant Financial to Buy Vietnamese eWallet eMonkey By Investing.com
© Reuters.
Investing.com – Ant Financial, a fintech company of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE:) (HKG:9988), is said to have quietly acquired substantial shares of Vietnamese e-wallet provider eMonkey.
The strategic investment is Ant’s eighth international deal. Ant will not control more than 50% of eMonkey, but will hold a sizable stake and offer technical support to the e-wallet provider.
Established by the Vietnamese fintech company M-Pay Trade, eMonkey is said to have obtained operating license from the State Bank of Vietnam. M-Pay also partners with most of Vietnam’s largest banks and telecom companies.
Vietnam recorded the highest e-commerce growth in the region, mainly due to the fact that a quarter of its 100 million people are under 25.
Reuters reported that the deal moved ahead quietly to avoid pushback amid anti-China sentiment in the Southeast Asian country. Disputes over maritime claims and China-backed special economic zones have remained unresolved between China and Vietnam.
“It makes sense that Chinese investors — including those who see the Vietnamese market as having a ton of consumer potential, as well as those diversifying into that country as part of the trade war — may want to keep a low profile,” Nick Marro, global trade lead at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told Reuters.
Tagged: Alibabas, Ant, Buy, eMonkey, eWallet, financial, Investingcom, Vietnamese
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CBS, Viacom complete merger in a win for Shari Redstone By Reuters
(Reuters) – CBS Corp (NYSE:) and Viacom Inc completed their merger on Wednesday, reuniting media mogul Sumner Redstone’s U.S. entertainment empire.
The combined entity, ViacomCBS Inc , is controlled by National Amusements Inc, the holding company owned by billionaire Sumner Redstone and his daughter, Shari.
The third attempt at a merger since 2016 is a decisive win for Shari Redstone, whose father built the companies through a series of mergers and then broke them apart 13 years ago.
The recombination comes amid an increasingly competitive media landscape dominated by Disney (N:) and Netflix (O:), prompting Redstone to pursue a merger.
The deal combines the CBS television network, CBS News, Showtime cable networks with MTV Networks, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and the Paramount movie studios.
Together, they will own more than 140,000 TV episodes and 3,600 film titles. Annually, it is estimated to generate about $28 billion in revenue.
The company said it will account for 22% of TV viewership in the U.S. and hold the highest share of broadcast and cable viewing across key audience demographics.
Class A and Class B shares of the combined company will begin trading on the Nasdaq on Dec. 5, ViacomCBS said.
Tagged: CBS, Complete, merger, Redstone, Reuters, Shari, Viacom, win
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EBCD
Online Event: EPR as an instrument to tackle microplastics pollution (2)
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OECMs in Marine Capture Fisheries
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Bushido: The Soul of Japan (2020)
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The Compleat Angler (2009)
Always Say Hi: The Introvert's Guide to Overcoming Rejection (2020)
Ba Zi - The Four Pillars of Destiny: Understanding Character, Relationships and Potential Through Chinese Astrology (2016)
Ethics in Sport (2017)
A Still Quiet Place for Athletes: Mindfulness Skills for Achieving Peak Performance and Finding Flow in Sports and Life (2018)
Taking the Plunge: The Healing Power of Wild Swimming for Mind, Body and Soul (2019)
Thoughts on the Run (2020)
Classical T'ai Chi Sword (2003)
Dropping In: Experience the Life You Were Meant to Live (2019)
Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do: Jeet Kune Do Techniques and Fighting Strategy - Self-Defense 4 (2019)
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Job Polarisation in India: Structural Causes and Policy Implications
Francis Kuriakose () and Deepa Kylasam Iyer ()
Deepa Kylasam Iyer: University of Cambridge
The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 2020, vol. 63, issue 2, No 3, 247-266
Abstract: Abstract Automation impacts wage levels at the micro-level and the structure of employment at the macro-level. Job polarisation is defined as the automation of ‘middle-skilled’ jobs that require routine cognitive and manual applications, whilst high- and low-skilled occupations are preserved. This paper examines the nature of job polarisation in India during the period 1983–2012 when Indian manufacturing sector was being automated. The research uses disaggregated data from National Sample Survey Office and examines the impact of supply-side factors such as nature of employment and presence of educated labour force. The study has three observations. First, the increased demand for high-skilled workers in the formal manufacturing sector is due to skill bias of technology and conforms to theoretical expectation. Second, the transition of agricultural labourers to low-skilled manufacturing sectors such as construction and textiles signals distress in traditional manufacturing sector to provide employment to these groups. Third, the over-supply of secondary and tertiary educated labour force has resulted in the squeezing out of middle-skilled workers from middle-skilled jobs to relatively low-skilled manufacturing and service occupations. This explains the persistence of routine occupations even after automation. The study concludes that in the Indian manufacturing sector, increased demand for high- and low-skilled jobs has coexisted with the middle-skilled jobs due to supply-side factors.
Keywords: Automation; Job polarisation; Supply-side factors; Manufacturing; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Working Paper: Job Polarisation in India: Structural Causes and Policy Implications (2018)
Journal Article: Job Polarisation in India: Structural Causes and Policy Implications
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ijlaec:v:63:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s41027-020-00216-7
http://www.springer.com/journal/41027
The Indian Journal of Labour Economics is currently edited by Alakh Sharma
More articles in The Indian Journal of Labour Economics from Springer, The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().
Handle: RePEc:spr:ijlaec:v:63:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s41027-020-00216-7
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Martin Garrix is in the Studio with Bastille and Tom Martin
Another mainstream crossover appears to be on the way from Martin Garrix.
Martin Garrix looks to be reaching across the musical aisle more and more in 2020. It recently came to light that the Dutch superstar DJ/producer is "working on some stuff" with OneRepublic. Now, it looks like a collaboration with Tom Martin and Bastille is also on the way.
On his Instagram story, Martin Garrix (real name Martijn Garritsen) shared a video clip of himself spending time with Martin and Bastille frontman Dan Smith. Captioning the video are the words "straight back in the studiooo [sic]."
Garritsen is no stranger to collaborating with artists outside of EDM. Last year, he teamed up with Macklemore and Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy on the anthemic "Summer Days."
For that matter, Smith has certainly crossed over into EDM. Bastille's 2018 Marshmello collaboration, "Happier," remained at #1 on Billboard's Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart for 50 consecutive weeks.
At the time of writing, no title or release date has been announced for an upcoming collaboration between Garritsen, Smith and Martin.
Facebook: facebook.com/martin.garrix
SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/martingarrix
Martin GarrixBastilleDan SmithTom Martin
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Nothing Is Eternal...
By WinterSleep85
alternateuniverse
gaslampfantasy
wattys2019
The world has been cast into a mysterious darkness. No natural light can illuminate the Dark. But small portions of the world have gradually been illuminated by an equally inexplicable light that is known as the Eternal Light. The priests of the Eternal Light are the only ones blessed with the ability to summon the light. People are allowed to live in this illuminated world as long as they worship the Eternal Light as a deity, forget the old world and obey the rigid laws of the priests. The only other choice is to be cast into shadows. For most people that is an easy choice. But eventually change began to dawn. The servants of the Eternal abuse their authority over people. Slowly the Illuminated World is losing ground to the Dark. Even the most devout areas can be consumed by the Dark. There is no longer certainty the Eternal Light is an omnipotent force. People are questioning. People are starting to challenge the priests. Three friends are caught up in this struggle. Their bond has sustained them through the overwhelming horrors and the mundane issues of such a world. But destruction is inevitable when fighting the light. Cover by the master of horror, Crimson_Graves!
Nothing I...
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BrainON
Fresh-Frozen
Home BrainON BrainON® by E3Live® Capsules - For High Cognitive Support
BrainON® by E3Live® Capsules - For High Cognitive Support
BrainON® by E3Live® powder is a super concentrated Aphanizomenon flos-aquae (AFA) extract of Phycocyanin (PC) Microalgae. AFA is a Certified Organic wild harvested Nutrient...
60ct 120ct 240ct
Size * 60ct
Nutritional Panel
BrainON® by E3Live® powder is a super concentrated Aphanizomenon flos-aquae (AFA) extract of Phycocyanin (PC) Microalgae. AFA is a Certified Organic wild harvested Nutrient Dense AquaBotanical™, considered by world-renowned health authorities to be nature's most beneficial superfood.
BrainON® by E3Live® has 2X the amount of Phycocyanin (PC) of our standard AFA by E3Live® powder.
BrainON® by E3Live® may promote:
Increased focus and clarity.
Healthy mood balance.
A healthy response to stress and enhanced well-being.
Ability to function at a higher level.
Increased concentration.
Support for a healthy immune system; and
Contributes to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue.
BrainON® by E3Live® Capsules are:
Certified Non-GMO - ACO Certification Ltd.
Certified Vegan - Vegan Australia.
Certified Kosher – North American Kosher Supervision.
Suitable for Passover and Halal.
Non-Irradiated; and
E3Live Australia Products are 100% Certified Organic by:
ACO Certification Ltd in accordance with the Australian Certified Organic Standards 2019 v1.
Organic Certified in accordance with the Australian National Standard for Organic and Biodynamic Produce 3.7 (DAWR).
United States Department of Agriculture (NOP) program by OTCO; and
European Organic Standard (EU) in accordance with ISO 17065.
60ct, 120ct & 240ct/400mg Capsules Servings Per Package : 30, 60 & 120 Servings Size : 2
Avg. Quantity per Serve (800mg) % Daily Intake per Serve (800mg) Avg. Quantity per 100g
Energy 12kj 0.13% 1474kj
PROTEIN 0.51g 1.02% 62.2g
FAT TOTAL 0.03g 0.04% 4.2g
Saturated Fat 0.03g 0.06% 2.9g
CARBOHYDRATE 0.12g 0.03% 14.4g
Sugars Less than 1g 0.00% Less than 1g
SODIUM 6mg 0.27% 849mg
Vitamin A (Retinol Equivalents) 76µg 10.13% 9520µg
Vitamin B12 (Cyanocobalamin) 3µg 156% 390µg
% Daily intake is based on an average adult diet of 8700kj
Nutrient content will vary when diluted with other liquids. BrainON® 'Contributes to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue'.
BrainON® is a proprietary, certified organic and chemical free extract of Phycocyanin (PC) from Aphanizomenon flos-aquae (AFA) Microalgae, 100%. A Nutrient Dense AquaBotanical™.
Serving Size : 1-2 capsules
Suggested Use : 1-2 capsules, 1-2 times per day. Remember to drink plenty of water during the day!
Storage : Store in a cool dry place away from direct sunlight', 'Once opened, ensure pack is tightly sealed after each use'.
To ensure our E3Live® Fresh-Frozen Superfoods arrive in its freshest possible state, we ship in quantities of 6 or more. The 6 bottles can be mixed with other Fresh-Frozen products. We have found a minimum of 6 bottles keep your order optimally cold during transit.
What is E3Live?
A There's only one ingredient in E3Live, and that's 100% Aphanizomenon flos-aquae (AFA), an edible freshwater plant. AFA is at the very foundation of the entire food chain.
Although it has been eaten for centuries by indigenous peoples, for the first time in history, AFA - nature's most basic food - is available in its complete, vital, fresh-frozen LIQUID form.
Aphanizomenon flos-aquae (AFA), meaning invisible flower of the water, is a fresh water nutritional plant referred to as cyanophyta. Cyanophyta are Energized Water plants that grow in nearly all droplets of sunlit water and in every gram of soil, on the bark of trees and the surfaces of rocks. It is estimated that there are as many as 50,000 species, including various seaweeds and plankton.
Collectively, cyanophyta are responsible for 90% of the Earth's oxygen and 80% of its food supply. Perhaps the most interesting of these unicellular plants are the cyanophyta community, of which there are about 1500 species--the Upper Klamath Lake, AFA, being one of them. AFA is a very special form of cyanophyta. All foods reflect the environment in which they are grown. The beautiful, unpolluted Upper Klamath Lake-one of the few remaining alkaline lakes on the planet holds the key to its remarkable potency.
This lake has an astonishingly high mineral concentration due to a massive volcanic eruption that occurred in the vicinity over 7,000 years ago, covering the area with millions of tons of mineral ash. Seventeen streams and rivers deposit into the 140 square mile lake an annual average of 50,000 tons of the mineral-rich silt from the surrounding 4000 square mile volcanic basin, making Upper Klamath Lake one of the richest nutrient traps in the world.
Much has been learned about this amazing food since it became available as a food source over 20 years ago. There are more benefits being discovered every day as this cyanophyta is introduced to the medical and scientific communities. AFA has been available in powders and capsules, but now for the first time in history, AFA is available in its much more potent and vibrant fresh-frozen LIQUID form in Australia!
How Do I Defrost E3Live?
Keeping E3Live Fresh
Keep frozen until ready to use, then place bottle in refrigerator to partially defrost. Pour off the thawed portion (only pour off enough for a 7-day supply). Place remainder of bottle back in freezer until ready to defrost again. For immediate defrosting, place bottle in cool water for 15 minutes and watch our defrosting video.
Insider's Tip
Find one of those plastic ice trays that has a lid (to keep freezer odours out) and fill the tray with your thawed E3Live (make sure that you measure so that each cube equals one serving for you). Put the tray back in the freezer. When you want to add E3Live to your juice you can use an "E3Live Cube" as your serving size.
How Do I Eat E3Live?
Some consumers love the natural taste of E3Live and drink it undiluted. Others mix E3Live in non-citrus juice, such as apple, grape, etc. You can mix in into a delicious fruit smoothie or a green drink, too. Many of our clients tell us that adding the "Green Blend" to their E3Live in the same smoothie or juice drink (or water) really produces a synergistic effect that enhances the benefits of both products.
Try making your own drink recipes with the E3Live, just do not expose it to hot temperatures as that will destroy the natural enzymes in it.
How Much E3Live Should I Eat Each Day?
No two people are alike. For most, we recommend starting with 10 to 15mL per day. Some people will eat E3Live in more liberal quantities even up to a bottle per week or whenever they need an added boost. For example, when Grant Hackett was training for the 2000 (Sydney Olympics), 1500m frestyle event, he was training for 6 hours per day. His intake of AFA fresh-frozen was approximately 240mL's per day! Work your way up at your own pace. Trust your intuition.
How Can E3Live Help With My Specific Medical Condition?
As with anything concerning your health, it is best to consult with your healthcare professional prior to consuming E3Live or E3AFA if you have any concerns regarding your health or a specific medical condition.
I Accidentally Thawed the Whole Bottle of E3Live... What Do I Do Now?
If you defrosted the bottle of E3Live in your refrigerator or in a cool bowl of water, and it hasn't been thawed for more than a few hours, it should be fine. Just pour off the portion for the week that you need, then refreeze the rest. Alternately you can pour off your weeks' worth, then make single-serving E3Live ice cubes by pouring into ice cube trays that have resealable lids (to keep freezer odours out). Add the single serving cube to your water or juice as your daily dose of E3Live.
If the E3Live has thawed out in a very hot room, has been out for many hours, has thawed outside in the sun, or some similar undesirable condition - check it for colour and smell. If it spoils, it will turn a muddy brown colour and have a rancid smell that will tell you that it has spoiled. If this happens - you can always mix it with water for an awesome plant fertilizer!
What's the Difference Between E3Live and E3AFA?
Both are 100% Aphanizomenon flos-aquae (AFA) a freshwater plant harvested from Klamath Lake in Oregon.
E3Live is the fresh frozen/liquid form of the AFA which is superior to all other forms of AFA. E3Live is the first and only company to offer AFA in this fresh frozen form.
E3 AFA is the Hydro-Dri, dried powder form of the AFA, which comes as either vegetarian capsules or loose powder.
Both are excellent foods. E3Live's live liquid form is closest to its natural high-energy state found in nature and is the ideal way to consume AFA. Our Refractance-Window drying method retains much of AFA's original nutritional and energetic properties. We recommend our Refractance-Window dried E3 AFA to further boost nutritional intake, as well as for your convenience at work and while traveling if refrigeration is not available.
What's the Difference Between E3Live and Man-Made Nutritional Supplement
E3Live is a whole, organic freshwater plant found in the wild that has both discovered and undiscovered nutrients. These nutrients are 97% fully assimilated. Only a fraction of the vitamin content of more expensive "health food vitamins" are actually absorbed by the body. Man-made supplements only contain what the formulators choose to include.
How is E3Live Different from Other Brands of AFA from Klamath Lake?
E3Live is the only AFA that is live, liquid and delivered to you closest to its natural state. E3Live is selectively gathered by our expert harvesters, and collected from only the deepest, most pristine waters of Upper Klamath Lake. We harvest only at peak times of optimal growth, when the AFA is the heartiest, healthiest and most vibrant.
Harvesting AFA is an art AND a science. We discovered that the strongest and freshest AFA possesses the highest life-force.
The benefits of AFA are directly proportional to the quality of the harvesting source, and how the AFA is handled at every step of the process. We take pride in knowing that we bring you the most potent and powerful AFA in the world.
How are E3Live's Harvesting & Filtering Methods Superior?
E3Live's superior harvesting and proprietary filtration methods ensure the absolute highest quality. The AFA is selectively harvested so that only the purest, most vibrant blooms are gathered. Starting at our harvest site, E3Live is immediately chilled to preserve its natural vitality and highest nutritional value. We work hand-in-hand with the most experienced, conscientious harvesters and knowledgeable researchers in the world.
How is the Consistent Quality of E3 Products Assured?
From the moment we harvest the AFA, to its final packaging, we work with only the most highly trained and qualified staff. We handle our AFA with such care from start to finish. Factors contributing to this quality include: where and how we harvest, keeping the AFA cold at all times, superior filtration and storage, and ongoing quality-control testing of all of our products. All E3 products are tested thoroughly by independent USDA certified labs for food safety, shelf-life and various other purity tests. A Certificate of Analysis (COA) is provided with every product!
The benefits of Aphanizomenon flos-aquae (AFA) are directly related to the care and attention given to sourcing and harvesting the product. Our quality care begins with the selection of the freshest AFA "blooms" from pristine Eagle Ridge. The harvesting is quickly followed by rapid chilling of the AFA to 34 to 37 degrees Fahrenheit. Next, our E3Live is further purified by careful centrifugation, leaving a product chilled and scrupulously clean. E3Live is handled more expeditiously from harvest to freezer than any competitive product. Our quality control parameters, coupled with our proprietary final processing, yields the Lake's most potent source of AFA.
Unless you know the source of your AFA, there is no guarantee of quality. E3Live and other E3 AFA products are harvested by the most competent harvesting team, and staff of engineers in our industry.
How Does E3Live & E3AFA Work?
Because people report AFA helps such a wide range of physical and mental symptoms, it's easy to fall into a "magic bullet" mentality associated with pharmaceutical drugs. AFA doesn't work that way. Aphanizomenon flos-aquae is an extraordinary food, not a drug or synthesized vitamin.
Artificial drugs are synthesized in the laboratory to produce specific effects on targeted cells, organs, or body functions. Though some drugs save lives, unfortunately, some drugs also create unwanted side-effects.
In contrast, Nature's innate wisdom works through AFA's full spectrum of over 65 perfectly balanced, naturally occurring vitamins, minerals, amino acids (protein) and essential fatty acids. AFA helps restore overall biological balance and nourishes the body at the cellular level. AFA is 97% absorbable by the body, compared to man-made vitamins which are only 5% to 25% absorbable. Without any toxicity or side-effects, this is how AFA can have so many beneficial nutritional and energetic effects throughout the body.
When (After Eating E3Live) Will I Notice a Difference?
The beneficial effects of E3Live and E3 AFA in your body can be subtle as it works to provide long-term protection and well-being. Some people may experience noticeable changes within a few weeks of use - others may notice differences right away or, conversely, notice no effect whatsoever.
It is important to maintain a healthy diet and exercise regularly in order to reap the full, long-term benefits of AFA. And, while the benefits of consuming AFA may not always be visibly manifested, be assured its phytonutrients are working "behind the scenes" throughout your body's internal systems.
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IFRS for SMEs 2013 Proposed Amendments
Current project stage: Completed
Project responsible: Filipe Alves
When the IASB issued the IFRS for SMEs in July 2009, it stated that it planned to undertake an initial comprehensive review of SMEs' experience in applying the IFRS for SMEs when two years of financial statements using the IFRS for SMEs had been published by a broad range of entities.
In June 2012 the IASB issued a Request for Information (RFI) as the first step in that initial comprehensive review. The objective of the RFI was to seek public views on whether there is a need to make any amendments to the IFRS for SMEs. The RFI asked questions about the IFRS for SMEs based on issues frequently raised by interested parties and relating to new and revised IFRSs issued since the IFRS for SMEs was published in 2009.
On 20 December 2012 EFRAG issued its final comment letter in response to the IASB's RFI.
In February 2013 the SMEIG reviewed the responses to the RFI in a public meeting and developed recommendations for the IASB on possible amendments. The recommendations developed by the SMEIG were presented to the IASB and published on the IASB website in March 2013.
The IASB discussed the issues identified during the RFI process (and a few additional issues) and deliberated possible amendments to the IFRS for SMEs during its March - June 2013 meetings.
In September and October 2013 EFRAG SME Working Group considered IASB's tentative decisions on IFRS for SMEs.
On 3 October 2013 the IASB published the Exposure Draft ED/2013/9 Proposed Amendments to the IFRS for SMEs and on 31 October 2013 EFRAG published its Draft Comment Letter on the IASB's proposed amendments.
On 21 February 2014, EFRAG SME Working Group considered the comments that EFRAG received in response to its draft comment letter and discussed EFRAG's final comment letter.
On 4 March 2014, EFRAG published its final comment letter on the IASB's Proposed Amendments to the IFRS for SMEs. In its letter, EFRAG welcomed the proposed amendments to the IFRS for SMEs and appreciated the IASB's efforts to consider the issues identified during the Request for Information (RfI) process.
In particular, EFRAG supported the IASB's proposal to align the main principles of Section 29 Income Tax with IAS 12 Income Taxes for the recognition and measurement of deferred tax. However, EFRAG encouraged the IASB to undertake an outreach with users and preparers to consider practical solutions for SMEs that cannot apply the requirements in section 29 without an undue cost or effort.
In addition, EFRAG thought that the IFRS for SMEs should not be changed based on changes in full IFRS that had not yet been implemented and considered that post-implementation reviews of new and revised IFRS represented the best opportunity to assess the suitability of the changes for SMEs.
Finally, EFRAG reiterated its recommendations specified in EFRAG's response to the IASB's Request for Information that it would be beneficial to SMEs if the IFRS for SMEs permitted the use of the revaluation model for Property, Plant and Equipment and included an option for the borrowing costs and development costs to be capitalised.
Exposure draft consultation
31/10/2013 - Draft comment letter
EFRAG Draft Comment Letter on the IASB ED 2013 9 Proposed Amendments to the IFRS for SMEs.pdf
04/02/2014 - Comment Letter Received
CL 01A ICAEW - EFRAG DCL ED 2013-09.pdf
CL 01B ICAEW - EFRAG DCL ED 2013-09.pdf
CL 02 ICAC - EFRAG DCL ED 2013-9.pdf
CL 03 ASCG - EFRAG DCL ED 2013-09.pdf
CL 04 IDW - EFRAG DCL ED 2013-09.pdf
CL 05 DASB - EFRAG DCL ED 2013-09.pdf
CL 06 FRC - EFRAG DCL ED 2013-09.pdf
CL 07A FEE - EFRAG DCL ED 2013-09.pdf
CL 07B FEE - EFRAG DCL ED 2013-09.pdf
CL 08 ACCA - EFRAG DCL ED 2013-09.pdf
CL 09 EFAA - EFRAG DCL ED 2013-09.pdf
03/03/2014 - Comment Letter
EFRAG Comment Letter on the IASB ED 2013 9 Proposed Amendments to the IFRS for SMEs.pdf
03/04/2014 - Feedback statement – comment letters received
EFRAG feedback statement on the IASB ED 2013 9 Proposed Amendments to the IFRS for SMEs.pdf
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M EHFC 2018
M CL 2014
M CWC 2012
Men's European Championship 2022 Luxembourg (LUX) 12 Men's World Championship 2021 Luxembourg (LUX) 1 2020 Men's European Championship Luxembourg (LUX) 16 2019/20 Men's European Cup / Challenge Cup Red Boys Differdange (LUX) 6 2018 Men's European Championship Luxembourg (LUX) 8 2017/18 Men's European Cup / EHF Cup Handball Esch (LUX) 6 2016/17 Men's European Cup / Challenge Cup Handball Esch (LUX) 4 2017 Men's World Championship Luxembourg (LUX) 1 2015/16 Men's European Cup / Challenge Cup Handball Esch (LUX) 15 2016 Men's European Championship Luxembourg (LUX) 12 2015 Men's World Championship Luxembourg (LUX) 8 2014/15 Men's European Cup / EHF Cup Handball Esch (LUX) 5 2013/14 Men's European Cup / EHF Champions League Handball Esch (LUX) 13 2013/14 Men's European Cup / EHF Cup Handball Esch (LUX) 9 2014 Men's European Championship Luxembourg (LUX) 2 2012/13 Men's European Cup / Challenge Cup Handball Esch (LUX) 18 2013 Men's World Championship Luxembourg (LUX) 1 2012 Men's European Championship Luxembourg (LUX) 5 2011/12 Men's European Cup / Cup Winners' Cup Handball Esch (LUX) 3 2010/11 Men's European Cup / EHF Cup Handball Esch (LUX) 5 2011 Men's World Championship Luxembourg (LUX) 0 2009/10 Men's European Cup / Cup Winners' Cup HC Berchem (LUX) 4 2010 Men's European Championship Luxembourg (LUX) 2
Kohl, Max
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Homepage : News : Israelis fatally shoot alleged Palestinian attacker
Israelis fatally shoot alleged Palestinian attacker
The alleged attacker was from Jerusalem [Getty]
A driver from Jerusalem was shot after allegedly attempting to run over a border guard.
Palestinian, Israel, Occupation, Shooting, West Bank, Lone Wolf Attacks, Jerusalem
Israeli security forces fatally shot a Palestinian at a checkpoint outside Jerusalem on Wednesday after he allegedly tried to run down a border policeman, the Israeli police said.
The driver, from Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, tried to flee an inspection at the checkpoint, hitting and lightly injuring the officer, the police said in a statement.
"The policeman and security personnel fired at the vehicle," it said, wounding the driver who was taken to a Jerusalem hospital.
"After attempts to save him, he was pronounced dead," Hadassah hospital said in a Whatsapp message.
The police did not immediately characterise the incident - at the Al-Zaim checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, just east of Jerusalem - as a terrorist attack.
The statement said army personnel checking the driver's documents became suspicious that they were forged and during the inspection the suspect drove off at speed, hitting the policeman.
The Hadassah statement said he arrived at the hospital's trauma unit "with no pulse and a severe stomach wound".
In June, Ahmad Erakat, nephew of Saeb Erakat the veteran Palestinian negotiator who died of coronavirus this month, was shot dead at a West Bank checkpoint after Israeli police said he drove his car at speed toward a policewoman.
His uncle said at the time that Ahmad, 27, was "executed".
He dismissed the police allegation of an attempted car ramming as "impossible", saying that Ahmad had been due to be married later in the week.
The previous month, a Palestinian man was killed in similar circumstances near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
He was shot dead on May 29 after trying to ram a car into Israeli soldiers, none of whom were injured, police said at the time.
Israeli forces, who have occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day war, are regularly targeted in the Palestinian territory.
From October 2015 Israel and the West Bank saw a wave of "lone-wolf" attacks on Israelis by predominantly young, knife-wielding Palestinians.
Car-ramming attacks were also used, and more rarely, firearms. The attacks have become less frequent but have not stopped altogether.
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English Language & Usage Meta
English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Origin of plurality of “wars” in phrases like “Star Wars”
There are a number of compounds in English of the form "noun wars," e.g. "Star Wars," "mommy wars," "culture wars." Why do these show "wars" in the plural? It seems like normally "wars" would pertain to a sequence of conflicts with more or less well-defined endpoints, whereas these phrases actually describe conflicts that have been going on more or less continually (I'd hesitate to say the conflicts are unitary since at least the latter two are quite complex and multifaceted phenomena; but then again actual armed conflicts are often complicated too).
I wonder if this is perhaps a snowclone; if so, what would the original member of the set be?
idioms grammatical-number attributive-nouns
echristophersonechristopherson
It just occurs to me the "Star Wars" series itself contained another example: the Clone Wars. I don't remember the prequels enough to know if there were multiple separate wars, but the Wikipedia page seems to suggest not. – echristopherson Mar 29 '14 at 22:12
I think this may well be a snowclone: with one exception, all the examples I can think of are either science fictional, or metaphorical. The exception is "The Wars of the Roses". – Colin Fine Mar 30 '14 at 0:27
Also the Balkan Wars. – Peter Shor Mar 30 '14 at 2:24
But didn't the Balkan wars involve multiple conflicts (Serbia vs. Kosovo / Serbia vs. Bosnia / Bosnia vs. Kosovo / etc)? – virmaior Mar 30 '14 at 2:27
I'd say the opposite: that the plural (as in the expression "back from the wars") suggests a repeated or ongoing state of conflict, especially one unlikely to resolve, whereas calling it "the mommy war" or "the culture war" would suggest a finite, well-defined struggle with an eventual winner and loser. – downwitch Mar 30 '14 at 4:40
It seems like normally "wars" would pertain to a sequence of conflicts with more or less well-defined endpoints
Why so? We find, for example, theRoman-Etruscan WarsandThe Wars of the Roses, yet thosewarshad no clearly defined endpoints. There were generally no official peace treaties designating the end of those conflicts - they raged on for a certain period, and were then resolved, for whatever reason.
The simple answer to your question is that since theculture warsorthe browser warsare compromised of numerous points of conflict within a fairly discreet period of time, they are referred to aswars. There is no specific endpoint to the individual conflicts, but they are, at large, confined to a particular era, and in a sense characterize that era, because of their scope, and the public's awareness of them.
So, in such context, the use of wars is used to designated a group of related, well known and important conflicts that occur within a fairly discreet period of time. Although each individual conflict might have no specific endpoint, the era characterizing such conflicts does. The culture wars are still being fought, but at some point in the future, they will end, and humanity will move on to otherwars. Thebrowser warsended some years ago. No clear victor emerged and no peace treaty was signed, but no one is really fighting those battles orwars any more. When exactly didthe browser wars end? Hard to say. But it's clear that today they are over, and we have entered a new period - that ofthe Tablet Wars.
VectorVector
I think the use of the plural is to make the term less specific. To use the singular, there must be a particular identifiable conflict. By using the plural the reader will think about the conflict only in generalities.
One does not refer to the "cold wars" but rather to the singular Cold War, even though it was not actually a war and did not have a precisely defined beginning and end. The Vietnam War had a precisely defined ending, but the specific beginning date is a bit fuzzy. But in each case it's immediately clear which conflict is being described.
When referred to as the noun wars, the noun in question describes what the conflict is about, whereas when a particular conflict is described the name usually describes who was fighting or where the conflict occurred. Sometimes you can even describe the same conflict in both ways. One could refer specifically to Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, but in another context, one might refer to them as "oil wars."
The Wars of the Roses (or Balkan Wars, World Wars, etc.) are a different situation. In these cases there are actually a group of related but well-defined conflicts. Today the Wars of the Roses tend to be referred to most often in the plural because, outside of historians studying them in detail, the individual conflicts making them up are rarely significant.
Because this use of the plural to denote lack of specificity appears elsewhere in the language, I don't consider it a snowclone, although I wouldn't be surprised if it's more common post-Star Wars. The oldest example that comes to mind are the "sheep wars" which occurred in the 19th century, but I doubt this was the first example.
fluffysheapfluffysheap
This is a "copywriter's usage". You know how in the US, for the super bowl (and also, say, The Simpsons seasons) .. roman numerals are used. It's always Super Bowl XXIII rather than Super Bowl 23. If you buy the DVD box set it's Simpsons IX rather than just Simpson 9.
You may ask -- why is that?
Quite simply, it sounds dramatic - a touch archaic
It's that simple. Using the roman numerals looks/sounds dramatic, archaic - it hints of a sort of scholarly importance, not unlike when an academic uses latin names, article references or the like.
So, quite simply, when people started talking about the browser war. (You can and do see "browser war" as well as "browser wars.") Some joker (a copywriter, or TV writer) was making a CNBC Original Series doco. on said commercial conflict. And, quite simply s/he decided that "Browser Wars" sounded more dramatic/funnier/whatever than just "the browser war."
(Indeed, that's precisely what Geo. Lucas did to tremendous effect in the title. It gives an archaic, dramatic, ye-olde-history-like feel to it -- it's so clever.)
{Imagine if the film had been called just "Galactic War." or "The Jedi War." Those just sounds like an ordinary action movie, about some action. No gravitas; no story-telling feel; no sweep-of-history feel.}
Indeed, there are any number of (cheesey) uses of the form in say advertising ("Winning the toilet-cleaner wars!!" sort of thing.)
Regarding the origin of the usage. It's a great question and I don't know.
Taking a wild guess, in Victorian times ("it sounds Victorian to me" -- I know you come to this site for hard evidence right? :) ) someone probably started referring to some messy ongoing set of wars with the plural. (As in "balkan wars".)
So I don't know the earliest usage; hopefully someone does.
But yeah, today in the USA it's one of those things "Like Roman Numerals" (or perhaps "using latin-esque naming"). You choose it because it lends a vaguely archaic sort of dramatic, story-telling-esque (or indeed, just humorous) air.
Star Wars is the ultimate (classy) example of this. As a cheesy usage, you can see it everywhere ("Basketball Wars! We take on East High tomorrow night!")
Regarding "is it a snowclone"? I urge you to set this question aside, because quite simply, the exact, absolutely precise, meaning of snowclone (or the earlier "catch structure", etc etc) is unknown. (For example, say someone was discussing what IS the meaning of snowclone: the sort of thing they'd discuss is whether the "_ _ _ Wars" format fits in to that meaning. So it's pointless us asking here, is it a snowclone.) If you want to assert that it's a snowclone - hell, you could assert it's the best and most primary example of a snowclone (given that Star Wars is a fundamental cultural artifact of the era) - if you wanted to.
Again the earliest use of the form is a great question - hopefully someone knows.
FattieFattie
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Middle East & North Africa General Knowledge Quiz
Religions of Middle East & North Africa Knowledge Quiz
Nuclear Energy in the Middle East & North Africa Knowledge Quiz
Climate Change in the Middle East & North Africa Knowledge Quiz
Architecture in the Middle East & North Africa Knowledge Quiz
Fanack Home / Quizzes / Architecture in the Middle East & North Africa Knowledge Quiz
January 8th, 2021 / January 8th, 2021
How much do you know about architecture in the Middle East and North Africa?
Fanack’s Knowledge Quiz on Architecture in the Middle East & North Africa!
In a time of travel restrictions, Fanack offers a pictorial trip around the Middle East and North Africa via architectural photographs.
Can you identify the city in which each was taken?
Picture by Dosseman | Creative Commons Attribution CC BY-SA 4.0
Do you want to know more? Check this out!
Culture in Turkey
Over the centuries successive civilizations have left their mark on Anatolia. Turkey's impressive architecture, across the country, bears testimony to its rich past, and visitors can admire many artefacts in Turkey's museums – and in many museums abroad. Modern Turkish music and literature enjoy worldwide acclaim, yet the international public is yet to discover the Turkish film industry.
Picture by Mehrdad Jamali Firouzabadi | Creative Commons Attribution CC BY-SA 4.0
Culture of Iran
The Islamic Revolution has had a great impact on Iranian culture. Islamic propagandists argue that decades of Western influence 'poisoned' Iranian culture
Picture by G Travels | Creative Commons Attribution CC BY-NC 2.0
Culture of Lebanon
In present day Lebanese literature, but also in Lebanese music, film or fine arts, the Civil War (1975-1990) and its aftermath are recurrent themes. Many artists want to remember and document these events and their aftermath, or to fight against the political and religious divisions that led to the war.
Picture by Diego Delso | Creative Commons Attribution CC BY-SA 4.0
El Djem, Tunisia
Tripoli, Lebanon
Adana, Turkey
Culture of Tunisia
The Tunisian culture is a synthesis of especially Arab and Berber elements, which come to expression in, among others, its jewellery, ceramics, tapestry, and music. Tunisia cherishes and promotes its heritage in its museums and various cultural institutions and initiatives.
Picture by Yasser Abusen | Creative Commons Attribution CC BY-NC 2.0
Culture of Saudi Arabia
The cultural environment in Saudi Arabia is highly conservative, and cultural presentations must accordingly conform to narrow standards. Despite increasing openness, Saudi artists still face restrictions on their freedom of expression.
Picture by B N Chagny | Creative Commons Attribution CC BY-SA 1.0
Shendi, Sudan
Culture of Sudan
Islam is an integral part of Sudan’s social fabric and media landscape as well as a politically mobilizing and polarizing force. However, other socio-economic and cultural factors play various interlinked roles in shaping the country.
Picture by Blondinrikard Fröberg | Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 2.0
The Islamic Revolution has had a great impact on Iranian culture. Islamic propagandists argue that decades of Western influence 'poisoned' Iranian culture.
Picture by Sammy Six | Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 2.0
Medina, Saudi Arabia
Picture by Francisco Anzola | Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 2.0
Culture in UAE
The official religion of the UAE is Islam, and the official language is Arabic. Both of these elements are intrinsic to the culture of the national population. The indigenous culture has also been shaped by the Bedouin life style, as well as centuries of fishing, pearling, and sea trade. The country is, however, thoroughly globalized, and other lifestyles, including Western, are readily visible. In most of the main cities, English is the language commonly spoken between different groups, and it is common to see Western dress and ways, including restaurants and fast-food chains, shopping malls, and night clubs.
Picture by Tomhab | Creative Commons Attribution CC BY SA 3.0
Algiers, Algeria
Culture of Israel
In view of the fact that the Jewish population living in Israel originates from all over the world, Israel's culture is multifaceted and diverse. In addition, the state stimulates a national Jewish culture.
FANACK HOMEPAGE
“Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hatred, and hatred leads to violence.
This is the equation.”
IBN RUSHD/AVERROES (1126 – 1198)
Fanack is a Dutch not for profit organisation (NGO), financed solely by individuals who share our belief in the importance of publishing and disseminating reliable, unbiased information on the Middle East & North Africa region. To represent the voice of the region’s people, we carefully echo the region’s heartbeat by offering fact-checked and therefore credible information.
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Tag: Jigsaw
‘JIGSAW’ (2017) SPOILER REVIEW – The Truth Will Set You Free
So the film has been out a while and there’s a bunch of stuff I wanted to talk about so … More
2017, Film, Horror, Jigsaw, Movie, Movie Review, Review, Saw 8, Tobin Bell
‘JIGSAW’ (2017) Movie Review – Saw Is Back With A Triumphant Return
If you told me seven years ago after walking out of Saw 3D that we would ever be getting another … More
2017, Film, Gore, Halloween, Horror, Jigsaw, Laura Vandervoort, Movie, Movie Review, Review, Saw 8, Thriller, Tobin Bell
‘SAW: THE FINAL CHAPTER’ (2010) Classic Movie Review – “GAME OVER!”
Saw: The Final Chapter is the final film in the Saw franchise (as of 2010) and where it ends on … More
2010, Betsy Russell, Cary Elwes, Costas Mandylor, Dr Gordon, Ending, Film, Hoffman, Horror, Jigsaw, Movie, Movie Review, Review, Saw 3d, Saw The Final Chapter, Saw VII, Spoilers, Tobin Bell
‘SAW VI’ (2009) Classic Movie Review – “Right Now You Are Feeling Helpless”
Saw VI is the last film in the franchise that despite my obvious love for the it, it can still … More
2009, Betsy Russell, Classic Movie Review, Costas Mandylor, Film, Gore, Horror, Jigsaw, Movie, Movie Review, Review, Saw, Saw 6, Saw VI, Tobin Bell
‘SAW V’ (2008) Classic Movie Review – “Killing Is Distasteful….. To Me”
Saw V is the first and last film in the franchise directed by David Hackl and continues right where Saw … More
2008, Classic Review, Costas Mandylor, Film, Horror, Jigsaw, Movie, Movie Review, Review, Saw V, Scott Patterson, Thriller, Tobin Bell, Torture Porn
‘SAW IV’ (2007) Classic Movie Review – “You Think It’s Over? The Games Have Just Begun”
Saw IV marks the third and final entry in the franchise to be directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, it is … More
2017, Costas Mandylor, Hoffman, Horror, Jigsaw, Lyriq Bent, Movie, Movie Review, Review, Saw, Saw 4, Saw IV, Scott Patterson, Tobin Bell
‘SAW III’ (2006) Classic Movie Review – “Suffering? You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet”…
Saw III is the second film in the Saw franchise directed by Darren Lynn Bousman this time with James Wan … More
2006, Amanda Young, Film, Horror, Jigsaw, Movie, Movie Review, Review, Saw, Saw 3, Saw III, Shawnee Smith, Tobin Bell
‘SAW II’ (2005) Classic Movie Review – Oh Yes… There Will Be Blood.
With the impending release of ‘Jigsaw‘ next month I thought it would be a good time to revisit the entire … More
2005, Donnie Wahlberg, Film, Horror, Jigsaw, Movie, Movie Review, Review, Saw 2, Saw II, Tobin Bell
‘SAW’ (2004) Classic Movie Review – Live Or Die…… Make Your Choice
It’s Halloween, so why not revisit this absolute masterpiece of Horror. ‘Saw’, the film that birthed one of the most … More
2004, Cary Elwes, Classic Movie Review, Classic Review, Danny Glover, Horror, James Wan, Jigsaw, Leigh Whannell, Movie, Movie Review, Psychological Horror, Psychological Thriller, Review, Saw, Thriller
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Worker Protection Standard for Agricultural Pesticides — Key Features
David E. Baker
Food Science and Engineering Unit
On Aug. 21, 1992, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the final Worker Protection Standard (WPS) governing the protection of employees on farms and in forests, nurseries and greenhouses from occupational exposure to agricultural pesticides. The Standard covers workers in areas treated with pesticides and employees who handle pesticides for use in the production of agricultural plants. The new Standard took effect on Oct. 21, 1992, and is enforceable when a WPS-labeled pesticide is being used.
The new Standard expands the requirements for issuing warnings about pesticide applications, using personal protective equipment and restricting entry to treated areas. New requirements have also been added for decontamination, emergency assistance, maintaining contact with handlers of highly toxic pesticides and pesticide safety training.
The new Standard also requires that pesticide registrants add appropriate labeling statements referencing the WPS regulations and specifying application restrictions and other regulatory requirements.
Affected employers
Agricultural employers who will probably need to comply with the WPS are:
Managers or owners of any farm, forest, nursery or greenhouse.
Labor contractors for any farm, forest, nursery or greenhouse.
Custom pesticide applicators or independent crop consultants hired by a farm, forest, nursery or greenhouse operation.
Most WPS provisions are protections that you as an employer must provide to your own employees and, in some instances, to yourself. Owners of agricultural establishments and their immediate families are exempt from many of the WPS requirements
Affected employees
The WPS requires employers to take steps to protect two types of agricultural employees: workers and pesticide handlers.
The terms "workers" and "pesticide handlers" are defined very specifically in the WPS, but in general terms they can be defined as:
Agricultural workers — those who perform tasks related to the cultivation and harvesting of plants on farms or in greenhouses, nurseries or forests.
Pesticide handlers — those who handle agricultural pesticides (mix, load, apply, clean or repair equipment, act as flaggers, etc.).
Depending on the task(s) being performed, employers may need to provide the same employee with worker protection in some instances and pesticide handler protections in others.
General WPS provisions
The provisions of the new Worker Protection Standard are intended to:
Eliminate exposure to pesticides
Mitigate exposures that occur
Inform employees about the hazards of pesticides.
Eliminate pesticide exposure
The final rule of the WPS reduces pesticide exposure through several requirements:
Protection during applications — handlers are prohibited from applying a pesticide in a way that will expose workers or other persons; workers are excluded from areas that are being treated with pesticides.
Restricted-entry intervals (REIs) — REIs are established for all pesticides used in the production of agricultural plants. They range from 12 to 72 hours, depending on toxicity. Workers are excluded from areas under an REI, with only narrow exceptions.
Personal protective equipment (PPE) — the regulation mandates providing and maintaining PPE for handlers and early-entry workers.
Notification of workers — workers must be notified about treated areas so they can avoid inadvertent exposures.
Mitigate pesticide exposure
Exposure to pesticides is mitigated in the final rule through the following provisions:
Decontamination supplies — providing handlers and workers an ample supply of water, soap and towels for routine washing and emergency decontamination.
Emergency assistance — making transportation available to a medical care facility if an agricultural worker or handler may have been poisoned or injured by a pesticide, and providing information about the pesticide(s) to which the worker or handler may have been exposed.
Inform employees about pesticide hazards
The final rule provides information about pesticide hazards through the following requirements:
Pesticide safety training — requiring training for all workers and handlers.
Pesticide safety poster — requiring the posting of a pesticide safety poster.
Access to labeling information — requiring that pesticide handlers and early-entry workers are informed of pesticide label safety information.
Access to specific information — requiring a centrally located listing of recent pesticide treatments on the establishment.
Pesticide labels will soon reflect the new WPS requirements. All pesticide products affected by the WPS will carry a statement under the new Agricultural Use Directions section of the label. This statement will instruct users that they must comply with all provisions of the WPS. If you are using a pesticide product with labeling that refers to the Worker Protection Standard, you must comply with the WPS.
The Worker Protection Standard has established a compliance schedule that will implement the provisions of the WPS in two phases. When a pesticide with WPS labeling is used, this schedule is as follows:
Product-specific requirements (PPE, REIs and the requirement on some products to warn both orally and by posting treated areas) are enforceable no sooner than April 21, 1993.
Generic WPS requirements, such as training, decontamination, duties related to PPE, general notification and emergency assistance, are enforceable on or after April 15, 1994.
Workers and handlers do not have to comply with the WPS until their pesticide labels are revised to include the specific provisions of the Standard. According to the Standard, pesticide labels do not have to be revised and in the channels of trade until April 21, 1994. Products that do not bear the required WPS statements may not be sold or distributed by anyone after Oct. 23, 1993.
Reviewed May 1996
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'Guilt Trip' Puts Barbra Streisand Back on Big Screen
Superstar Barbra Streisand is returning to the big screen after a 16-year hiatus! The Oscar winner told “Extra’s” Jerry Penacoli that it was her son, Jason, who convinced her to take a role in “The Guilt Trip.”
“That was the clincher,” she explained, “He said ‘Mom, I think you should do it.”
Streisand continued, “It was a big deal to go back full-time, five days a week to work… I tried to talk them out of hiring me.”
For more with Streisand and co-star Seth Rogen, watch the video!
“The Guilt Trip” drives into theaters Dec. 14.
#AsSeenOnExtra #BarbraStreisand #JamesBrolin #SethRogen #TheAList #TopStories #TrendingStories
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Locations in Transformers: Prime
1 Autobot Outpost Omega One
2 Hangar E
3 The Nemesis
4 The Harbinger
5 Darkmount
Autobot Outpost Omega One[edit]
Autobot Outpost Omega One was the Autobots's hidden base on Earth, located inside a mountain just outside of Jasper, Nevada. It serves as Autobot Central Command. It used to be a Cold War missile silo before it was converted: as a result, it's shielded against radio signals and is operated using old human machinery. The base was destroyed in the episode Darkest Hour, by the Decepticons after they discovered its location. The Autobots then split up and later, re-located to a hanger in a military base.
Hangar E[edit]
Hangar E is the new home base of the Autobots, after Autobot Outpost Omega One was destroyed at the end of Season 2. From the outside, Hangar E looks like any other hangar on the Nevada military base it's part of. The base was later discovered by Soundwave and supposedly destroyed by Starscream.
The Nemesis[edit]
The Nemesis is the Decepticon's main base. It is an enormous and intricate warship, containing Cybertronian technology and numerous weapons. After Megatron's death and the retreat of the Decepticons, the Nemesis was occupied by the Autobots to restore Cybertron.
The Harbinger[edit]
The Harbinger was a Decepticon transport shot down by the Autobots, which then crashed on Earth. It is similar in design to The Nemesis, both being of Decepticon origin and having Cybertronian technology. For much of season two, it is the main base of Starscream. After Starscream re-affiliates with the Decepticons and the (former) Autobot base got destroyed, Bumblebee, Raf, and Ratchet used the Harbinger to communicate with the other Autobots.
Darkmount[edit]
Darkmount is a massive, 5.5 mile high fortress situated near Jasper, Nevada. Forbidding and evil, it is armed with multiple fusion cannons, making it the perfect headquarters for Megatron's future conquest of Earth. It's also sometimes referred as "New Kaon". The citadel was eventually destroyed by the Autobots (with the help of Agent Fowler and his fighter squadron), forcing the Deceptions to retreat to their old warship.
This article "Locations in Transformers: Prime" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Locations in Transformers: Prime. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
Kickback (Transformers)
Repugnus
Predacon
Vector Prime (Transformers)
Transformers technology
Wreckage (Transformers)
Retrieved from "https://en.everybodywiki.com/index.php?title=Locations_in_Transformers:_Prime&oldid=925435"
Transformers: Prime
Transformers (franchise)
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Program (en erreur 500 do not touch)
10 October - 6:00pm Plenary conference
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Redirecting to /404.html.
Matthieu Tordeur, Adventurer, member of the Society of French Explorers (SEF).
Who is Matthieu Tordeur ?
At the age of 27, Matthieu Tordeur is an adventurer member of the Société des Explorateurs Français and his adventures have taken him to more than 90 countries.
By bike, ski, foot, solex, sailing or kayaking, he has traveled the Atlantic Ocean, North Korea, Iraq, Patagonia, Pakistan, Antarctic ... He is the first French and the youngest in the world to have joined the South Pole alone on skis, without assistance or refueling. He went around the world at the wheel of a 4L to promote microfinance, ran 6 marathons in a row in the Sahara Desert, the Pyongyang Marathon in North Korea, crossed Europe twice by bicycle and Atlantic sailing.
These expeditions have their share of risks and the question of security punctuates each stage of his extraordinary human adventures. From the conception of a trip to its realization in the field, the scenarios confront the reality. How to prepare for the uncertain and deal with the unexpected?
Never traveling without his camera, he documents his adventures in books and documentaries. Matthieu is the author of 4L, A world tour of microcredit and the director of the documentary Microcredit in 4L, A world tour of microcredit. A real life lesson by a young man who made the world his favorite place to walk.
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North America > Central America > Belize > Belize District > Belize City
1.2 By water taxis
1.4 By shuttle
8 Stay safe
Belize City waterfront.
Belize City is the largest city in Belize. It is on a small peninsula protruding into the Caribbean Sea. It was the capital city until flooding and other damage from a hurricane in 1961 prompted the government to relocated to Belmopan, closer to the geographic center of the country.
17.5362-88.30811 Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport (BZE IATA), Belize City (about 30 minutes drive (15 km) northwest of Belize City centre in the village of Ladyville), ☏ +501 225-2045, ✉ bacc@pgiabelize.com. BZE is connected from the U.S. (American, Delta, United, and Southwest); from Central America (Avianca El Salvador, Transportes Aéreos Guatemaltecos and Copa) and from the surrounding regions of Belize, the Yucatan Peninsula and from Flores by Maya Island Air and Tropic Air. There are seasonal flights offered from Canada with Air Canada Rouge and Westjet. The best way to get to and from the city centre is by taxi. If going to San Ignacio see "By shuttle" in the below as there are shuttle companies based in San Ignacio that offer airport transfers to San Ignacio and to the surrounding areas in the Cayo District. Some may connect the airport to other places such as the water taxi terminals in Belize City or Placencia from the airport without going to San Ignacio. Ask. An airport bus service does exist, but it is very infrequent and unreliable. (updated Jun 2017)
17.516389-88.1916672 Sir Barry Bowen Municipal Airport (TZA IATA). Flights from regional airports.
By water taxis[edit]
17.49542-88.186683 Ocean Ferry Belize, 50 N Front St (Along Front Street at the northeast end of the Swing Bridge), ☏ +501 223-0033, +501 233-0033, +501 223-2033. Connects Belize City to Caye Chapel, Caye Caulker and San Pedro (updated Sep 2017)
17.49426-88.184864 San Pedro Express (http://www.belizewatertaxi.com), 111 N Front St (behind a marketplace that is 250 m east along Front St from the Swing Bridge & the Ocean Ferry Belize Terminal), ☏ +501 223-2225. Connects Belize City to Caye Caulker and San Pedro Town. They have a once daily connection from Caye Caulker and from San Pedro to Chetumal. (updated Sep 2017)
By bus[edit]
Buses from Santa Elena/Flores in Guatemala (2-3 hr) arrive at the San Pedro Express water taxi terminal at 111 N Front St while the ADO bus to Mexico are at the Novelo's bus terminal. See the below:
Atlanta Tour & Express Bus, 111 N Front St (Inside the San Pedro Belize Express Water Taxi Terminal). Arrange onward transport to Flores with Linea Dorada or Fuente Del Norte (FDN) (updated Sep 2017)
17.49502-88.184675 Mundo Maya Travels, Suite #26, Brown Sugar Market Place 90 Front St (250 m east along Front St from the Swing Bridge & the Ocean Ferry Belize Terminal.), ☏ +501 223-1200. They sell tickets for onward travel to Guatemala by Fuente Del Norte (FDN) and San Juan Express. They may also sell tickets for Linea Dorada and ADN as well. (updated Sep 2017)
17.49498-88.185956 S & L Travel & Tours, 91 N Front St (Same building as Image Factory, Next to Spoonaz Coffee), ☏ +501 227-7593. They offer tours to different places around the region as well shuttle transportation to Tikal, Flores and Cancun (updated Sep 2017)
Grupo ADO, Novelos Bus Terminal @ W Collett Canal St. Once nightly departure to/from Cancun and Merida. (updated Sep 2017)
17.49398-88.1937 Various from Novelos Bus Terminal, Novelos Bus Terminal @ W Collett Canal St (W Collett Canal St and King St). Bus travel is a very common mode of transportation in Belize for going to work, shopping and other errands. Therefore, bus service along the main highways is frequent, usually hourly and sometimes half-hourly during peak travel times. For service to/from small rural towns off the main highway they can be less frequent to as little as 4 times or twice daily and no service on Sundays. Like the famous chicken buses in Guatemala, they operate in the recycled U.S. school buses, but they can also be in the older MCI (Motor Coach Industries) buses (intercity buses used by Greyhound and other companies in the U.S., usually for "express" services). They are usually not crowded, but they can be too. The services provided are either "regular" which means they stop anywhere along the road to pick up and let off passengers and "express" with only scheduled stops in major towns. (updated Sep 2017)
The Northern Zone (Belize City - Orange Walk - Corozal) Some continue north to Chetumal in Mexico from Orange Walk while others may deviate east or west from the Philip Goldson (Northern) Highway (main road) to other surrounding towns. They are: Albion’s, Belize Bus Owners Cooperative (BBOC), Cabrera’s, Chell’s, Frazer, Joshua’s, Morales, Tillett’s, T-Line and Valencia. Northbound buses depart from Belize City about every half hour from 05:30 to 19:30. Jex and Sons Bus provides bus service between Belize City and Crooked Tree.
The Western Zone (Belize City - Belmopan - San Ignacio - Benque Viejo Del Carmen) They are: BBOC, D and E, Guerra’s Bus Service, Middleton’s, Shaw Bus Service and Westline. Westbound buses depart from Belize City between 05:00 and 21:00. Some may continue west from San Ignacio to the Guatemalan border at Melchor del Mencos but they do not cross into Guatemala. Others may continue north or south from Belmopan, San Ignacio, etc to reach other towns not on the Western Highway.
Southern Zone (Belize City - Belmopan - Dangriga - Placencia - Punta Gorda) Buses to the Cayo and Stann Creek Districts to the south are: James Bus Line, G-Line Service, Ritchie’s Bus Service and Usher Bus Line. Buses authorized to operate in the rural areas of the Southern Zone are Chen Bus Line, Yascal Bus Line, Smith Bus Line, Richie Bus Line, Martinez Bus Line, Williams Bus Line, Radiance Ritchie Bus Line, and Polanco Bus Line.
The companies and drivers' unions don't have websites or published schedules like they do in Mexico and the "west". If they do, it's usually handwritten on a piece of paper or cardboard and taped to a wall or bus station window for all to see at the bus station. The buses do display the final destination or a list of major destinations served on the windshield.
By shuttle[edit]
Shuttles can pick you up at the airport, your hotel or from anywhere, and transfer you much quicker to almost anywhere in the country and with much more ease since they are door to door:
Belize Ground Shuttle The only shared shuttle service in Belize with daily scheduled airport service. email: belizegroundshuttle@gmail.com
Ron's Belize Shuttle. Specializing in private shuttle service to any destination in Belize. email: belizetraveladvisory@gmail.com
Elies Guerras Transfer Service (Belize Shuttle Service), Belize City, ☏ +501 666-9834, ✉ info@guerratransfers.com. An easy way of getting to and from Belize City, Shuttle can be done on your time. Shuttle is Reliable and on-time for transfer at Any Resort or Hotel. (updated Sep 2017)
Teddy Bear Shuttle, (office) #17 San Ignacio Town, Cayo, ☏ +501 600-2695, +501 667-1441. Teddy Bear shuttle and taxi service is safe and reliable, you can find him just behind the Belize Bank in the center of San Ignacio Town. (updated Sep 2017)
Mayan Heart World, (office) 29 Burns Ave, San Ignacio Town, Cayo District. Offers private shuttle transfers from San Ignacio, Belize western border to Flores or Tikal in Peten, Guatemala. The company even have the ability to transfer you to just about any where from San Ignacio Town. (updated Sep 2017)
Belize Shuttle Co, ☏ +501 666-7268, toll-free: +1 888 398-1914 (US). It has an outstanding record of transporting you to and from your destination on-time. Your Belize Shuttle Driver is Denfield Gomez, known locally as Denny, maintain an impeccable driving recorder when it comes to shuttling you to or from your destination. (updated Sep 2017)
http://www.sanignacioshuttles.com/, (office) 22 Burns Ave, San Ignacio City, ☏ +501-628-7037. Operated by Sergio Paiz, runs to all major shuttle destination in Belize, Located on Burns Ave, San Ignacio Town. (updated Sep 2017)
Williams Belize Shuttle, 26 Gorge Price Highway, ☏ +501 620-3055, ✉ belizeshuttle@yahoo.com. Airport transfer service, with door to door pick-up and drop off.. (updated Feb 2020)
BASS, ☏ +501 662-7225. Airport shuttle service to Belize City, San Ignacio and any other destination in Belize. (updated Sep 2017)
Most of them are based in San Ignacio Town, east of Belize City in the Cayo District and wrote about connecting San Ignacio to the airport and other places in Belize. Therefore, you must ask them if they provide transportation originating in Belize City and going somewhere else if you don't plan to go to San Ignacio.
17°30′0″N 88°11′47″W
Map of Belize City
Use a taxi. If you want to get out of Belize City, use the taxi, bus, or even the little airplanes which take you to other destinations in Belize for less than US$100.
Belize City Government House
Bliss Insitute
17.49331-88.185831 Bliss Centre for the Performing Arts, Southern Foreshore, Belize City, ☏ +501 227-2110. The largest cultural centre in Belize, it also hosts the National Art Collection of Belize. (updated Jun 2017)
Eco-museum Belize, Mile 14.5, Western Highway. A living museum of Belize tropical treasures. Here, they show you how Belizeans use and recycle natural resources in the construction and decoration of the museum. The museum is dedicated to show visitors the beauty of nature in harmony with the Belizean culture.
17.4883-88.18672 Government House. Once the residence of the British Governor General, this is now a "House of Culture" that is open for visitors. (updated Jun 2017)
17.49504-88.186023 [formerly dead link] Image Factory, 91 North Front St, Belize City, ✉ imagefactory70@yahoo.com. M-F 09:00-17:00, Sa 09:00-18:00, Su 10:00-17:00. An independent gallery and cultural center with changing exhibitions and a small book shop. Probably the best place in Belize to learn about contemporary local art. Free parking across the street in secure parking lot (updated Jun 2017)
17.49807-88.183514 The Museum of Belize (City centre, walking distance to water taxi terminals as well as the "Tourism Village"), ☏ +501 223-4524. A former prison and now the national museum of Belize. (updated Jun 2017)
17.4732-88.25025 Old Belize, Mile 5 George Price Highway, Belize City, ☏ +501 222 4129. Old Belize is a landmark attraction, offering a total Belize experience for locals and tourists. At its heart is the Old Belize Exhibit, a stirring, large as life, cultural and historical display taking visitors back in time to various defining segments of Belize’s past, with authentic relics from key periods, a haunting introductory teaser to the Mayan legacy in Belize, an eerie depiction of the Belize City of Colonial days, an intimate glimpse into 18th century logging camps, and more. Old Belize also features the only beach in Belize City, the Old Belize Marina, a full service restaurant, plus conference facilities and banquet hall. Old Belize is located at Mile 5 on the Western Highway, a BZ$10 (Belizean dollars) cab ride from the Tourist Village, Brown Sugar Terminal, downtown Belize City, and most central locations in Belize City.
17.488611-88.1877786 St John's Cathedral. An Anglican cathedral that was built in 1812. The cathedral is a landmark of Belize and one of the oldest remaining buildings in the city. (updated Jun 2017)
17.48814-88.189257 Yarborough Cemetery (Next to St. John's Cathedral). This cemetery was in use from 1787 to 1896. It was renovated in 1999 and has been designated an archaeological reserve in 2009. (updated Jun 2017)
Most tourists use Belize City as a transportation hub and spend little time in the city. With that said, Belize City is still the cultural centre of the country and offers a comparably large number of cultural attractions.
All places accept US dollars as the Belizean dollar is pegged to the US dollar at BZ$2=US$1. If you are travelling to the cayes, stock up on your cash at the central bank, as the ATMs on the islands often run out of money on weekends. A number of merchants do recognize and accept US dollars or give change in US dollars or a combination of US and Belizean dollar bills and coins.
If you want to shop there is tourism village in the Fort George area which has jewelry shops like Diamonds International and lots of gift shops. Fort George is located on a boardwalk.
Albert Street is the main street in the Commercial District and features many shops and small shopping centres.
Tourism Village. Created to boost cruise ship tourism in Belize City, the Tourist Village is only open when a cruise ship is in town and features a variety of shops and restaurants.
17.210129-88.65844461 Cave Tubing (Belize Cave Tubing), ☏ +501 660 5656, ✉ belizejunglemasters@gmail.com. Cave Tubing – Enter an exciting realm where rivers disappear into the underworld as you float on inner tubes with only your headlamp to lead the way. tours are scheduled to fit within the port time of the cruise ships arriving in Belize City. (updated Oct 2017)
Publics Supermarkets, W Canal Street, ☏ +501-227-1837. 08:00-21:00. there are now three Publics stores in Belize city. has most things you need. (updated May 2018)
The Belize Bank, Scotiabank and Atlantic Bank (all over Belize.). 24 hour atms. All three banks have ATMs that take Mastercard. (updated May 2018)
17.4979-88.1841 Mama Chen, Eve Street (near Queen Street). It's not a guesthouse anymore, but it is a nice Chinese restaurant with a familial and friendly atmosphere. Meals around BZ$10.
Vegetarian Restaurant, Mile 14.5, Western Highway, Orchid Garden Eco-Village.
Neris II, Regency Street: great conch soup, but the season ends on the first of July.
Big Daddy's Diner, Central Market: Reasonably priced, very local, and a great view of Haulover Creek, home to much of the city's modest fishing fleet.
Dit's Cafe: Great watermelon juice and wonderful pastries.
Smoky Mermaid, Fort George area: Upscale dining.
Harbourview, Fort George area: Very upscale dining, with a great chef.
Marva's: a small family-run restaurant serving good, hot breakfast within walking distance from the water taxi terminal
17.50083-88.193311 Riverside Tavern, 2 Mapp St (Mapp St & N Front). Tu-Su 11:00-24:00. Owned by Belize's only brewery you can get the freshest and coldest draft beer. Also great hamburgers, and other food available.
17.49508-88.186132 Spoonaz Photo Cafe, 89 North Front Street. Coffee shop near the water taxi terminal. Has a nice patio and A/C inside. Great place to spend some time waiting for the ferry or a night bus. Free Wi-Fi. (updated Mar 2016)
Although Belize City has a bad reputation, Commercial District and the Fort George District are safe during the day. Virtually all sights and the water taxi docks are in this area and tourist should not be worried about exploring these neighborhoods while waiting for a bus or water taxi. Other neighbourhoods in Belize City have a very high crime rate and you should take a taxi if you have to leave the city centre.
17.4969-88.18531 Three Sisters Guesthouse, Queen Street, near majestic alley cross, ☏ +501 203-5729. Check-out: 11:00. Held by a lovely Salvadorean woman. Three narrow rooms with private bathroom, wifi, no a/c. Large (somehow empty) common space. Noisy during daytime, ok at night. 1 person=BZ$55, 2p=BZ$63, 3p=US$71, 4p=BZ$109, 5p=BZ$120 (Dec 2014).
17.4962-88.18372 Sea Breeze guest house, Gabourel Lane. Central but quiet location. Dbl with fan: BZ$60, with a/c: BZ$80
17.49195-88.186033 [dead link] SeaSide Guesthouse, 3 Prince St (From main bus station, head south on Cemetery Rd until Albert St, go right on Albert St until Prince St, then left on Prince till the seawall ends), ☏ +501 227-8339, fax: +501 227-1689, ✉ seasidebelize@gmail.com. Basic rooms but centrally located and probably one of the cheapest options in Belize City. If you are lucky, you might get a free public Wi-Fi from the terrace. Dorm from BZ$30. (updated Jun 2017)
17.4639-88.38464 [dead link] Orchid Garden Eco-Village, ☏ +501 225-6991, ✉ info@trybelize.com. From this tranquil, secure and beautiful home base some fourteen miles from Belize City, you just need to pack lightly to visit other interesting locations, such as Caye Caulker or San Pedro, Placencia, and San Ignacio. (updated Jun 2017)
Heven Backpackers Hostel, 72 Albert Street, Belize City (down town). A great backpackers hotel. Dorm beds. $15 per person. (updated Jun 2017)
Chateau Caribbean: A great place to stay. Food is great, especially the seafood soup. The service is awesome. The hotel is a large colonial style house which was at one time a hospital. The structure could use some repairs, but if you can look beyond that it is the best deal in town, especially as it offers you a great view of the seafront while sipping on the best Baileys Colada in Belize City.
Seas Guesthouse: A resort on the outskirts of Belize City on the western highway named Old Belize. It is a beautiful resort with a beach named Cucumber Beach. One can learn about life in Old Belize there. Tourists are shown the chicletos and rum makers of Belize and the importance of baymen and loggers who logged the mahogany (the national tree). There is also colonial houses, a marina, and restaurants.
D'nest Inn (info@dnestinn.com), 475 Cedar St, Belama Ph 2 (From the Best Western Biltmore, head towards the police station and then make a right. The D'nest Inn is located next to the soccer field and the river, right behind the far goal), ☏ +501 223-5416. This very cozy and reasonably priced B&B is half the price of the Biltmore, has large spacious rooms, with cable TV and air conditioning. There is plenty of hot water and great water pressure. Best of all, this B&B is run by the nicest couple you will meet, who will go out of their way to make your stay extra enjoyable. Breakfast is included with the price of the room and is always a home cooked meal.
[dead link] Hotel Mopan, 55 Regent St, ☏ +501 227-7351. Check-in: 15:00, check-out: 11:00. One block away from the Caribbean Sea, close to water taxis, restaurants and shops. Clean, comfortable, friendly, budget minded hotel. BZD100-130.
The Western Highway leads to Belize West or the Northern Highway to Belize North.
Water taxis regularly run from the main terminal to Caye Caulker, a 25-minute trip, and Ambergris Caye, a 75-minute trip.
San Pedro Belize Express [dead link] departs from the Brown Sugar Terminal in Belize City with scheduled runs at 09:00, 12:00, 15:00. 17:30 to San Pedro, Ambergris Caye and Caye Caulker.
Rates: Belize City to San Pedro, San Pedro to Belize City: BZ$30 or US$15 (one way), BZ$55 or US$27.50 (round trip), Belize City to Caye Caulker: BZ$20 or US$10 (one way), BZ$35 or US$17.50 (round trip)
A week-long trip to Green River in the south to experience the rain forest and a week-long trip to the coral reefs to experience the reefs are both recommended.
Belmopan capital of Belize (80 km to W). Stop on way to see Belize zoo at Mile 29 George Price Highway.
You can get to San Ignacio via Belmopan a good stopping off point for the ruins of Tikal in Guatemala.
This city travel guide to Belize City is a usable article. It has information on how to get there and on restaurants and hotels. An adventurous person could use this article, but please feel free to improve it by editing the page.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Belize_City&oldid=4100489"
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This travel guide page was last edited at 04:15, on 3 December 2020 by Wikivoyage user Wrh2Bot. Based on work by Wikivoyage users Ibaman, Anyone150, Ground Zero, Traveler100, DaGizza, Belizetraveler, Traveler100bot and Ikan Kekek, Wikivoyage anonymous user 179.63.220.2 and others.
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8 Bye-bye Abe Lincoln's Democracy! Bye-bye blue Planet?!!
At Copenhagen in December 2009, politicians failed to agree on joint action to save our planet. Politicians have also failed democracy. Has any one noticed? The only living planet in our solar system is in mortal danger -- and the melting glaciers, rising tides, desertification, and the annihilation of non-human lifeforms should be ample evidence to most rational beings of our own pending disaster. The only solution is the energetic mobilization to wise action of the world's so-called rational animals to safeguard our common and unique home. That does not mean world government. In the present deplorable state that would introduce overt or covert dictatorship. But it requires world supranational democracy. It would mean treating the world as a community of human beings with common problems and common interests in survival. It means treating our neighbours as ourselves, not as greedy enemies. Just rules must be agreed by all.
It would deal with the planet just like Europe approached the major threat to its existence -- ever more violent war -- and eliminate the problem through the Community method. Then as now, many people selfishly do not want to be treated as co-citizens for peace or creatures dependent on each other for survival. The founding fathers did in fact persuade an overwhelming majority of Europeans to 'make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.'
Are we up to the challenge today? In 1949 -- sixty years ago -- Schuman told all the newly arrived members of Europe's first parliament: You are here to save the world from suicide. Each of them got a copy of his text. All the governments too. He was right then, but we are NOW facing another act of human stupidity leading again, degree by degree, to WORLD SUICIDE.
If all the politicians had agreed to act on this new planetary threat -- which they didn't -- then that is not the same as mobilizing the entire population. Why? Because so many politicians have lost the trust of the people. It is the people who have to be convinced the planet is in danger. Why? Simply because it is the people who will have to make the changes in their lives and lifestyles. Every citizen has to show the same solidarity to save the planet.
The time is gone when politicians could say: Do this, and the people will follow obediently. Citizens are refusing more and more to vote for politicians. Less than half of 'voters' even voted. And that figure includes countries where politicians deem that citizens should be fined if they do not vote. (Some politicians arrogantly deny the people's right to be free to choose.) Still the electors refuse. They say in effect about the ballot slip: None of the above. Politicians are seen as being 'on the take'. The public sees the money -- if only in the newspapers. The politicians say they are professionals, whatever that is. But the public says that they are there for their political machines and to get jobs for their political friends. The political machines keep them busy, well-fed and, above all, dependent. For example they expect as a matter of course, not to do their jobs voluntarily, that is as a free public service -- like many of the politicians did in the past. No, they expect a salary (plus huge perks) that is perhaps ten times the national average salary. We're worth it, they say. Even the attendance allowance is often multiple times the voter's salary.
Not good enough. They failed the test that politics should primarily be about SERVICE. It would be far better for politicians to earn a normal living, to have a profession or to trade. A real job would perhaps set their feet on the ground, bring a dose of reality, and contact with normal human beings. They could be given expenses for trips to Brussels or Strasbourg. Is this likely to happen? No. Why? Because the moral fibre is lacking, even to propose such a measure. That is symptomatic of our moral bankruptcy. If European politicians can't kick greed and consumerism, we can have no leadership from them for the planet.
And, as if to make our survival more uncertain, the self indulgent, greedy party political image of rich politicians and poor electors has become the model that the developing countries seek -- even in the country of Gandhi. The former worker republics of Russia and China -- that used to preach world solidarity and considered themselves the saviours of the oppressed -- have become the selfish refusniks against action by a global community.
The only way to solve Europe's problems -- and the planet's -- is to ask all the people some simple questions, and get their positive affirmations. This is what is called the Community method. It mobilises all citizens in civil society and allows all citizens to react. That Community method has been abandoned first by people like de Gaulle in the 1960s and the rejection is now written up in the Lisbon Treaty. For example: how about asking the people whether they want carbon trading or not? When did anyone ask them? Taxation without representation but also without a discussion and acquiescence will end in tears and a crisis for parliamentary systems.
We are entering multiple global crises, not only climate change and energy but threats of global lawlessness, ideology and financial corruption. At this crucial time, Western Europe and USA have grown fat, ignorant and self-indulgent. They are in no way prepared for the intellectual analysis and spiritual testing that is required for such challenges. Multiple enemies, some of our own making, are at the gate. Do we have the tools and weapons to deal with them?
Take the example of our concept of democracy. Or rather, let us go back to US President Abraham Lincoln's famous definition, spoken out on the ruined battlefield of the American civil war. Democracy, he said, was government of the people, by the people for the people.
With the Lisbon Treaty -- brought in IN SPITE of the people and against their expressed will -- we now have a party oligarchy. It is rule by a party cartel of two or three main party machines. The party politicians in fact agreed to the Lisbon Treaty, NOT THE PEOPLE. It is government by the party, for the party and of the party.
The democratic bodies that the Founding Fathers like Robert Schuman declared to be non-political and free and independent of party interests and governments -- are all under the thumb of political parties. The Commission is now a forbidden zone to anyone without a party card. No elections were taken for membership of the Commission. No advertising was made to ask the public if they knew of any one who was qualified as experienced and impartial. No one from the non-political public proposed a member of the Commission. No member of the public had the opportunity to object to the politicians that the political machines put forward. The Council of Ministers that decided on these politicians was secret. No camera was allowed in, no journalist. Not even a member of the public, designated as an observer.
This is in direct violation of the founding principles of the Europe Declaration of 18 April 1951 that European citizens themselves, not the parties, should be 'FREE TO CHOOSE.'
In the beginning nearly all its members of the Commission were free from party political membership. Some resigned party membership because they wished to be seen to be impartial. Why? because all the members of the Commission must be INDEPENDENT. They also represented by this impartiality normal, free citizens. The only one of the FIVE institutions of Supranational Democracy that has remained free from being an exclusive party political zone is the Court of Justice. For how long?
Labels: Copenhagen, EU, Lincoln, opinion, planet, Schuman, suicide, supranational
7 The coming FIRE STORM on European Democracy. The Commission provides a poison pot
The European Commission has published a Press Memo called: Explaining the Treaty of Lisbon. Read it carefully as if you were enjoying a cup of tea — but treat it as if someone might have put lumps of poison in it. Remember these are the people who for several decades hid and denied the existence of the Europe Declaration. They still do. In this first Declaration about Europe's democracy, the founding fathers said the NEW Europe would be defined by countries where the people were 'free to choose' To hide such an important Declaration is a deliberate immoral act. Even more immoral is an act to deny any public consent while governments overturn a democracy.
When it comes to constitutional matters, any moral flaw is tested to destruction by citizens or leaders wanting or tending to corrupt it. Public revulsion will either eliminate the poison, or corruption will destroy a weak, morally-flawed constitutional arrangement. That final destructive stage amounts to a revolution or turning over of a corrupt and corrupting system. A constitutional system based squarely on moral principles will survive any test of fire. It will be rebuilt if necessary.
The European Community system is a treaty-based initiation of supranational democracy. It is still not working properly because governments have agreed to its five institutions but not to democratize them as required. Supranational democracy is the purest form of democracy so far initiated in practice. It is highly successful -- it brought Europe peace -- but it was immediately tried by fire. It has survived the attacks of nationalists such as de Gaulle. It is now being tried in a new fire: party political oligarchy.
'Democracy as defined by Robert Schuman involves being at the SERVICE of the people through actions AGREED by the people. It provides a democratic voice for nations, associations of individuals and for individual citizens. The rule of law is open to all. It has the means to provide the best practical solution to small and to global problems based on in-depth REASONED DEMOCRACY. That means the reasoned assent of different interests must coincide. Since its inception, supranational democracy has been supported by many who understood it. This is clear from the Europe Declaration that governments have suppressed. (Only Luxembourg to my knowledge has published it!) It was opposed by many who called themselves democrats (often combative politicians in conflictual parliaments).
Secretive Intergovernmentalism has been added by treaties like those of Amsterdam, Maastricht and Nice. The Lisbon Treaty tries to change what remains of supranational democracy by eliminating the voice of non-party civil society.
With the Lisbon Treaty we are entering a new period of trial and testing for the survival of real supranational democracy. The coming trial by fire will either burn its institutions or the undemocratic seizure of power by an oligarchy of political party machines will auto-immolate themselves to cinders.
The conflict that will take place is clear from this Memo. But be careful! It is in Orwellian PR speak.
Example. The Memo asks, ‘Why does Europe need the Lisbon Treaty?’ It answers 'To realize its full potential, the European Union needs to modernize and reform.’
That sounds reasonable. Who can be against modernization or reform? By modern most people would mean just and fair and correcting past wrongs and injustice. The truth is a bit different. The Treaty does not help Europeans have more democratic and responsible government. This is therefore a fib. What would be real modernization would be for governments to respect and observe the treaties they signed up to. That includes their specific obligations. They haven't even dealt with their bad school report.
It would therefore be modern for the Commission to become clearly more independent of all interest groups including political parties. Who wants it to be biased, prejudiced and partial? Instead, the reform has made it totally dependent on a party political oligarchy. Don't ask for an application form for Commissioner! The institution is under the control of two or three political parties. Who controls the parties? Under the the Treaty politicians have decided to exclude 98 per cent of the citizens from becoming a Commissioner. Normal non-political citizens have been kicked out off the Commission. It is probably the GREATEST ACT OF DISCRIMINATION EVER LEGISLATED IN MODERN TIMES. Is that modernization? Politicians seized exclusive control to secure their own interests. That is a corrupt act.
Though admittedly not impossible, it is difficult for politicians to be independent. Why? because the political parties are partisan. They are also a clan, an interest group. They are lobbyists. They are the biggest and most powerful lobby groups in the whole of Europe. Politicians have years of training and experience to fight for partial causes. That is the opposite of being trained to be impartial. Yet this dubious category "politician" is the only one the Treaty deems capable to be candidates. And they are chosen in secret. Hm, something smells fishy. Let's look further.
Modernization for the European Parliament would mean to have ONE proper, fair European election. It is NOT modern to have 27 separate national elections where the government parties in each Member State fix the rules to maximize their party votes.
The founding Treaties of Paris and Rome said there should be one single election under common rules for all. Governments agreed to this. They did not implement it. It has still not been implemented since then — nearly SIXTY year of undemocratic ABUSE!
First the governments led by Charles de Gaulle refused to have any elections at all. Other governments spinelessly acquiesced -- until 1979. That immoral act sowed the seed and harvested the bitter consequences. Five governments opposed de Gaulle and said they were more democratic. But they kinda liked the corrupt idea that they could choose who the people's representatives would be. They would definitely not be any one who went against party political machines.
The British Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin strongly supported this abuse. Worse he may have started the anti-democratic trend in Europe. He refused Schuman's proposals for direct elections, sixty years ago. This was to the Council of Europe Consultative Assembly in 1948-9. French parliamentarians, wartime resistance leaders, (may they be long remembered), riposted with vigour: 'Where can we go if we see old England abandoning democracy?'
It is exactly that British attitude of party political paternalism that has now been proclaimed as the central doctrine of the Lisbon Treaty. Party machines now believe they have a divine right to rule everything in Europe. They are wrong. Non-political civil society has rights too. People are losing confidence in politicians.
Faced with elections in 1979, the governments continued to fiddle the outcome. They do this by having national rules for so-called European elections. Some voters are getting the equivalent of ten or twelve votes compared with other Europeans.
Let's move closer to the origin of this poisonous mess. What real modernization would mean would be that the Council of Ministers would open its heavy doors to the public and the press — like the Parliament and other normal democratic institutions do. This is what Schuman said should happen. And he said all committees should be open to the public and democratic decisions.
Rather than modernization we have a great leap backwards into the dark ages. We have a secretive, unresponsive, political cartel and political nepotism. That is a seizure of power, without democratic consent. The people were not 'free to choose'. When they said NO -- three times at least -- they were ignored.
The Press Memo also asserts falsely that there will be 'increased democratic accountability.' How can there be accountability when the treaty renders it impossible to sack the Commission? See Debate commentary 2 and also my letters to the Commission, Parliament and Council on this. And the politicians have created a system were they can vote themselves whatever extra money they want. It is up to their conscience, without checks and balances. They can create extra jobs for their chums. No one in the Commission, Parliament or the Council will stop them. They all benefit; they are all fellow politicians. Will they exercise restraint or will their hands be in the cookie jar? Both hands are already in the jar, according to many observers.
The Memo also asserts that the citizens will benefit because the Lisbon Treaty provides a ‘more democratic approach to EU decision-making (strengthening the role of European Parliament and national Parliaments.)'
This is also patently not true. Look, I acknowledge that, so far, the politicians and their machines got their way after ten years of public disgust. Their chums got fancy jobs. But don't say it is democratic, when the people weren't asked. (The treaties both Constitutional and Lisbon, were written by politicians and agreed by politicians. The Lisbon Treaty was signed by politicians and benefits politicians. Europe's founding treaty of 1951 wasn't written by politicians -- that's another reason why the Europe Declaration which says so, has been hidden from public view. It describes how treaties for supranational Communities should be written, by whom and who should assent to them.)
Reform. The Lisbon Treaty does absolutely nothing to insure the Parliament reforms itself. (It is the Council that can refuse any reform.) At the moment the European Parliament and a number of national parliaments are unfortunately hardly exemplary debating chambers of free independent representatives of their electors. In previous times, parliamentarians made up their own minds. The best decided by what they considered to be the most enlightened moral criteria. Reform was often made in spite of politicians, not by them. Parliaments today have rather become political theatre for out-of-touch party political machines. The machines force parliamentarians to vote in one direction or another, according to party whips.
This is no way to run a highly complex, technical society when issues have to be decided, and politicians admit they do not understand the technicalities (from global problems to how their own poor live) and are overtly partisan about other issues. This was one reason why Schuman introduced supranational democracy, designed to deal with complexity. Presently national parliaments can come up with half-baked and quite unfair decisions. Does it help? Even if they have a firm opinion, it does not really count in Europe.
In the end, it is the Council, which decides in secret about what it really wants. The Council and the whole system is largely a European party political duopoly.
Whoever controls the parties, controls the dossiers of government ministers. Parties receive European funding from the taxpayers without asking the public's permission. The Commission, now free of non party members, is the secretariat of the political cartel. That is practically the opposite of how supranational democracy is supposed to work. The Lisbon Treaty is a politicians' wish-list, cooked up at night in secret by the Council's politicians, a rehash of the rejected Constitutional Treaty. Hardly a model of democratic consent that their grandchildren could be proud of.
The Treaty shows that the Council still has not got enough courage to have open debates when it decides. Ministers think secrecy is best for their policies for Europe's 500 million fellow citizens. That is paternalism. It does not reflect the original concept of five free and independent democratic institutions coming together to arrive in REASONED DEMOCRACY. Who knows what influences the secretive Council? What we have seen so far about their decision making procedures shows raw, ignorant power plays, not reason.
The Commission Press Memo asks: How will the Lisbon Treaty change the Commission’s role in economic and financial policy? It quickly answers — it hopes before the reader has time to reflect — ‘The Lisbon Treaty strengthens the Commission’s role as independent “referee” in economic governance.’
Nonsense. That is the reverse of the truth. It tries to cover over what is a political coup d’Etat by the political party cartel. The Commission is supposed to be as independent as the most impartial judge in the most impartial court of law. Politicians do not like independence — especially when it impinges — in this case heavily — on what they consider to be their own sphere of bombast. But the founding fathers said that the Commission should be INDEPENDENT — and for that it should NOT be composed exclusively of politicians but mainly of NORMAL human beings who inhabit Europe. I would not like to go to an independent Court of law based on the same principles -- where the judge is also an interested party in the dispute. The founding fathers, mostly Statesmen, were able to discern that fellow politicians often cannot be trusted. They decided that the Commission should be INDEPENDENT because interest groups -- call them lobbyists or cartels -- were expert in influencing politicians usually to the detriment of the wider interests of the public.
The previous treaties did allow the original principle of independence to persist in THEORY. In practice, especially since the time of de Gaulle, it became just lip-service. Politicians gradually edged their way into the Commission. The first were honorable enough to resign from parties. Then once the politicians had made a bridgehead and gained a majority, they refused to resign from their political parties. Then they took over.
The fib in this reply asserting 'independence' can easily be seen by the fact that today’s President of France was cock-a-hoop that he had got a very political Commissioner who would twist things in the way of French policy — or rather his own policy. He did not boast that France had the most impartial, independent and experienced candidate. That means he is the President's messenger, contrary to European law. We should not blame the French president in isolation because many of the other governments do exactly the same. By the definitions in the treaties about independence, that is illegal.
The principle of independence of the Commission is defined in the early treaties. They should take no instructions from any government, nor any other interest group. At the moment the Commissioners are the puppets of governments/ political parties. How do I know? They are nominated in secret by governments.
Did you see any elections for so-called 'national Commissioners' taking place? Or was I nodding off at the time? What of the famed Democratic countries? What of the Mother of Parliaments? If one country had a widely publicized election for ‘their’ Commissioner it would of course embarrass everyone else. What ever happened to democracy? It is all done with extreme rapidity in the hope that no one will notice how undemocratic the political parties in 'democratic' governments were. They put in their chums. Some governments sent off political chums to cool their heels in Brussels, because they were no longer really wanted at home. No eminent Europeans who were not proud possessors of party cards had a ghost of a chance. Nobody!
All the governments send these politicians to Brussels with a clear understanding about what they should be doing and how they should act. The Commissioners then use the Commission as a stepping stone for a political career. They resign when asked by the governments to do so. That is contrary to the treaty. It is also immoral.
Clearly the writer of the Press Memo had not looked into the treaties. The original Commissioners had to sign up to an agreement that they would not take a job in any sector of their European competence for three years after leaving office. That ensured their independence. Even that shows the treaty writers were rightly skeptical about human nature. To compensate, Commissioners received a sufficiently high salary and severance pay. Ex-Commissioners could also take a normal job elsewhere. But apparently this is not sufficient for the present greedy breed of politicians.
I am waiting for the first Commissioner to say they are voluntarily refusing any similar job after they leave the Commission for a minimum of three years after. And then there is the other side of the coin. It would be nice also for them to sign a document that they would refuse to resign from the Commission — if their home government, that is, their political party — offered them a ministerial post in their State.
Oh, I have only got to the first two pages and there is much more of this kind of PR poison to follow. No doubt we will get back to it again. I have the feeling that the real debate on Europe is only now beginning. We had no real debate about what supranational democracy is. The Commission provided no information about how supranational democracy works. And then there was the conspiracy of silence across the road. The Council of Ministers refused as long as possible even to publish the text of the treaty so that the public could not debate it. They said they would publish it after everyone had agreed to it. What sauce! And the Hungarian Parliament passed it without even reading it!
Unfortunately like a complex money-making racket invented in secret by people who profess little understanding of supranational democracy, we are in for the practical demonstration of the flaws in the cartel's coup d'Etat. Don't expect riots to happen tomorrow. It took years of abuse by de Gaulle with scandalous wine lakes and meat mountains, and secret finances, to bring Europeans to their senses. By then the Mafia, with their mattresses stuffed from Community funds, had built up a stronghold in the Italian south. Democrats elsewhere were askance -- and stayed away.
Schuman said that democracy is not something that can be improvised. He spoke of the thousand years it took for democracy to emerge in the history of Europe. May I live so long to see it come after all this! But it is sure that immoral rascals will not persist, and they will eventually be thrown out, one way or another. Democracy provides the means to throw the rascals out.
It is a great pity because all of us will suffer for the folly of a few greedy politicians. All Europeans are missing a far better form of democracy that would be of benefit to all around the world. And how the world needs it!
Labels: complexity, constitution, democracy, fire, Lisbon, Luxembourg, opinion, poison, Schuman, supranational, Treaty
6 Open letter to new Commission on SUPRANATIONAL DEMOCRACY
Subject: Europe's foundational Declaration of Inter-Dependence
Communicating Europe with "old documents"
Dear President Barroso and Commissioners,
Congratulations on your new positions. During the coming months, the 60th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration must be planned to take place on 9 May 2010. I hope that the entire Commission will give great thought to the preparations for this major event. The Member States are living through the longest period of peace in more than 2000 years of European history. We are faced with global challenges of the greatest dimension. Europe has to set the highest moral example as it did by creating a Community of peace.
Yet for the last decade or more I have asked the Commission's information services to communicate in publications and on the web the foundational documents of Europe. This includes the FULL text of the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 and the Europe Declaration made and signed by all founding fathers on 18 April 1951 after the signing of Europe's founding treaty. This Declaration of Inter-Dependence is equivalent in importance to America's Declaration of Independence. I have never seen a publication of the Commission where this is printed. Why not?
In this regard, I am enclosing a copy of my latest letter to the Commission's Communications services, who have not yet replied to my August request to publish these foundational documents. I hope that the first thing in office will be for you to publish "the real foundation of Europe" -- to quote from the Europe Declaration.
My best wishes for your term in office to build supranational democracy.
Schuman Project
Extract from letter.
To Commission Communications services.
In August I again wrote that it was high time that the Commission published the EU’s founding public documents. I asked about its plans on the 60th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration in May 2010. This time they should publish the full text. For many decades the Commission has published only a censored version. It said it was the FULL text. It isn’t. To my knowledge the Commission has never published the founding fathers’ Europe Declaration on Inter-dependence of 1951. This announces and confirms the birth of Europe and its democratic principles.
I have received no answer. No explanation was forthcoming. Instead in the internal correspondence between officials that I was also sent, the question was raised: Why is this gentleman obsessed with old documents?
It is a good question and deserves an answer.
I would first like to ask my own question as part of that answer:
Why are Commission officials so little concerned about the origin of the vitally important institution for which they are working? Do they understand the history and purpose of European construction?
Forgive me for my tone, but I have been waiting more than a decade for the Commission to answer. I have made many requests. These requests to publish the founding documents of the European institution are not for some academic knowledge. The Commission was the world’s first SUPRANATIONAL institution and the public has a perfect right to know what it is all about and how it affects their lives. It is up to officials to be able to explain this in detail. Supranational Democracy was not introduced as an academic exercise but to solve some of the existing problems like stopping more than 2000 years of continuous war between European peoples. It was also designed to tackle future global calamities facing not only Europe but all those on the planet.
This is what Robert Schuman’s long-term friend and colleague, René Lejeune, wrote: ‘The solution of the enormous problems, which future generations will have to face, largely depends .. on the {Community approach} of which Robert Schuman will be the initiator.’ He called it ‘the principal procedure for the future of humanity’.
Notice the future tense. If you do not know what process Robert Schuman started, if you do not know why he started it, or how it works, no civil servant is capable of serving the public.
The cost of NOT having a supranational democracy is enormous, both in human terms, its social disruption, its financial cost and in its global consequences. I wrote about this in a recent commentary on Your Democracy in Europe.
The sort of distortions, disinformation and falsehoods that the European institutions are propagating against the founders of those institutions is costing billions of euros and possibly trillions.
That is no exaggeration. Take one example in simple monetary terms. We have already lost untold trillions to the European economy because Europe has NO ENERGY POLICY. It has an intergovernmental wish-list at best with no democratic or legal basis worth speaking of. If officials had paid attention to the founding fathers and read the declarations and official reports, they would long ago have taken serious action to create an Energy Community (to follow the Coal and Euratom treaties). Why? Because lack of ENERGY INDEPENDENCE is Europe’s political Achilles’ heel. Instead all plans of the founding fathers towards energy independence were blocked, abandoned, side-lined or chloroformed.
The rise of oil from around $2 in the 1970s to nearly $150 a barrel cost the European economy multiple trillions. This ruined the economy in the 1970s and 1980s, and wiped out a colossal surplus balance of payments. It destroyed industries. It set back the introduction of the Euro by a decade. That alone amounted to multiple billions in wasted costs to the economy. Economists say that the oil cartel, by unilaterally increasing the price of every barrel of oil and gas equivalent by $25, dispossesses the EU of around $100 billion yearly extra for exactly the same goods. Another way to call cartel action is economic blackmail. And abroad, it set Africa ablaze with wars and corruption. That is why the founding fathers designed the Commission to be a strong anti-cartel agency.
It is shameful that the Commission succumbed to political pressure in the time of de Gaulle. Even more as it is still doing so. Is it on automatic pilot? It has for decades refused to publish the founding or birthday document of the European Union. That is the Europe’s Declaration of Inter-dependence. It was signed by all the founding fathers such as Schuman and Adenauer who had just signed the founding treaty of the European Community.
By that spineless act of hiding these documents from the late 1950s to the present, the European Commission has participated in the blindness of de Gaulle and similar autocrats believed that they alone had the intelligence to solve all of France’s, Europe’s and the world’s problems. He was proved wrong on most counts. The Community method involves open democracy with a multitude of counsellors to provide safety.
The Founding Fathers denounced the false and counterfeit ‘democracies’ behind the Iron Curtain where various parties (sometimes even called Christian Democrats, Liberals and Socialists as in the DDR) were a sham. Schuman called them a sinister caricature of democracy. Whatever the people thought, whatever their opinion, the decisions were all made by political apparatchiks and functionaries in meetings behind closed doors. Those who suffered under dictatorships in both the east and west of Europe are familiar with this.
The Europe Declaration www.schuman.info/EuropeDeclaration.htm affirms that Europe is open to all countries that have the freedom to choose.
Indeed, one of the main reasons why I founded the www.Schuman.info web site about ten years ago was to be able to publish the full text of the Schuman Declaration because the Commission had signally failed to do so, despite my and other requests. It failed also in its primary duty as Guardian of the Treaties.
The Commission will have to publish these documents one fine day. Will it be now or when it is covered with further shame? I am asking therefore that urgent reconsideration should be given to publishing these foundational documents in the immediate future.
I look forward to an announcement about the Commission’s plans for the sixtieth anniversary of the Schuman Declaration.
I am sending a copy of this letter to the Commission President and also to Vice President Wallström. I am publishing this as an open letter on several websites including www.schuman.info http://democracy.blogactiv.eu and http://eurdemocracy.blogspot.com .
5 Has Europe lost its sleek democracy and got an old, lame camel? Politicians hid the most important document in Europe's sixty year history !
The Europeans and especially their leaders are behaving like a blind man in a coal cellar. They have lost their way and lost their vision.
What is the most important of the documents signed by the Founding Fathers of Europe? Even if people knew what it was, they would be hard pressed to find a copy. Europa.eu of course will not show you a copy. You won't find it in any of the Commission's publications. Forget about the secretive Council or the passive EcoSoc!
What I am talking about is the Declaration made by the Founding Fathers that defined their vision of a democratic Europe and of their future. That is especially relevant now, in our time and for our future. But where is the document? Why do the so-called European institutions not have a copy on show somewhere or at least accessible in the public archives. Even if they violently disagree with it, why do they deny its existence??
The Document I am referring to is called the Europe Declaration. It was signed by all the leaders of the Six founder States. Schuman of France, Adenauer of Germany, Count Sforza of Italy, Bech of Luxembourg, van Zeeland of Belgium and Stikker of The Netherlands and a few others for good measure. All signed the founding treaty of the European Union on 18 April 1951. On that same day they signed another document right after the signature of the Treaty of Paris. It described the principles of European democracy. It is called the Europe Declaration because it gives a lucid vision of the future.
Do you ever get the impression that you are living in Stalin's Soviet Union? Maybe Dr Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda UeberBoss, has been working in the basement of the Commission's Berlaymont building for the last few decades. The vital truth of one day, its most important information for all citizens, is buried and censored as if it never existed. We are given ersatz 'information', crafty distortions, PR paid for from EU funds. Instead of the obligations to reduce the membership of the Commission, the politicians provide jobs for political chums, one per majority party in each State, and scores of new but unnecessary jobs for the political cartel. The new political leaders want to play their own game and a bit of truth is most inconvenient. The Declaration also reminds governments of their duties towards their citizens -- as servants. A Europe following the vision of the Founding Fathers would be leaner and all Europeans would be better off, in many ways.
The reason, of course that the leaders -- the political cartel today and the Gaullists of yesteryear -- do not want you to know about this Declaration is that it gives an idea about how we should be running the show democratically today. It uses the words, politicians do not like and cannot explain. That is SUPRANATIONAL DEMOCRACY. It speaks about nations where the citizens are free to choose. And many other uncomfartable truths.
We now have a lame camel of a treaty -- the Lisbon Treaty -- a horse designed by a committee and decided without democratic assent -- instead of the thoroughbred race horse we could have had.
As a public duty I present the full version of the Europe Declaration. It is as important a document as America's Declaration of Independence. This we can call the Europe Declaration of INTER-DEPENDENCE. Not something to appeal to Charles de Gaulle. However today we are living on a planet that is perishing. If we do not recognize our interdependence it will not just be sad, it could well be the end of our species. Other species are dying out fast, due to man's egotism. The principles of inter-dependence and how we can manage the planet democratically are of vital importance, not only for Europeans, but all earthlings on this blue planet, the only speck of hope in all the black, hostile reaches of space.
Europe Declaration
The following declaration was made and signed on same day as Europe's founding Treaty of Paris, creating the European Coal and Steel Community. It affirms that Europe must be built on supranational democratic principles. That is true then. It is true now.
The President of the Federal Republic of Germany, His Royal Highness the Prince Royal of Belgium, the President of the French Republic, the President of the Italian Republic, Her Royal Highness the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, Her Majesty, the Queen of The Netherlands,
Considering that world peace can only be safeguarded by creative efforts commensurate with the dangers threatening it;
Convinced that the contribution that an organized and invigorated Europe can bring to civilization is indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations;
Conscious that Europe will not be constructed except by concrete achievements establishing first of all the reality of partnership, and by the establishment of common bases for economic development;
Anxious to cooperate through the expansion of their basic products in raising the standard of living and progressing in works of peace;
Resolved to transform their age-long rivalry through the consolidation of their essential interests, and, by the inauguration of an economic Community, to assemble the initial basis for a broader and deeper Community of peoples who had for centuries been opposed in bloody conflicts, and to set the foundations of institutions capable of providing a direction to a destiny that is henceforward shared,
Have decided to create a European Coal and Steel.Community
This work that has just been confirmed by our signature, we owe to the wisdom of our delegations and to the perseverance of our experts. We are deeply grateful to them.
Even before the work was set in motion, the very idea that was its inspiration had already aroused in our countries and beyond its borders an extraordinary surge of hope and confidence.
In signing the treaty founding the European Community for Coal and Steel Community, a community of 160 million Europeans, the contracting parties give proof of their determination to call the first supranational institution into life, and consequently create the true foundation for an organized Europe.
This Europe is open to all European nations that can decide freely for themselves. We sincerely hope that other countries will join in our common endeavour.
In full awareness of the need to reveal the significance of this first step by sustained action in other sectors, we have the hope and the will in the same spirit that presided in the elaboration of this Treaty, to bring the current projects now in preparation to a successful conclusion. The work will be pursued in conjunction with the existing European bodies.
These initiatives, each with their particular objective, should rapidly take their place within the framework of a European Political Community, the concept of which is being elaborated in the Council of Europe. This should result in the coordination and simplification of the European institutions as a whole.
All these efforts will be guided by the growing conviction that the countries of free Europe are inter-dependent and that they share a common destiny. We will strengthen this sentiment by combining our energies and our determination, and bringing our work into harmony through frequent consultations and building ever-increasing trust through our contacts.
Herein lies the significance of this day. We have no doubt its importance will be understood by the public opinion of our countries and by our parliaments, who are called to decide on its ratification. The governments that are represented here together will act as interpreters of our common will to build a peaceful and prosperous Europe. And we will serve it together.
The declaration was signed by Konrad Adenauer (West Germany), Paul van Zeeland, Joseph Meurice (Belgium), Robert Schuman (France), Count Sforza (Italy) Joseph Bech (Luxembourg), Dirk Stikker and J. R. M. van den Brink (The Netherlands).
Posted by David Heilbron Price at 9:22 AM 1 comment:
Labels: 1951, Adenauer, camel, de Gaulle, Declaration, EU, Europe, Goebbels, horse, Interdependence, Paris, propaganda, race, Schuman, Stalin, supranational, Treaty, USA
4 Would the Founding Fathers be shocked at the fall of the Berlin Wall? Hardly. They planned for it!
In 1989 leaders of the European Community were shocked and worried about what they considered the dangerous consequences of the fall of the Berlin Wall. German unity was inevitable.
Some tried to block it. Others warned of a German Reich. Germany had been at the origin of three wars in a century: the Franco-Prussian war and two World Wars.
In the twenty years since the Berlin Wall fell, have politicians learned anything about the European Community? The Community was actually designed as the guarantee that Germany would not be able to go to war against its neighbours EVER again. That is what the founding fathers said.
I have looked as best I could over the past two decades to find a politician clearly explaining this point by point to the public. Maybe I am negligent but I have not found any evidence that either the European Commission, or the Council of Ministers or other politicians ever explained how Schuman and others conceived that the five institutions should work and would create peace with Germany when it was united.
Yet Robert Schuman and others gave the highest profile speeches about it fifty years ago. Why were these speeches not republished by the European institutions? Why were they not republished by the French, German and other Governments? Were the institutions asleep -- dreaming of federations or confederations or their brain child, the Constitutional Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Lisbon?
Let's look at the speeches given by Robert Schuman in 1948 and 1949 to the United Nations General Assembly.
On 28 September 1948 -- three short years after the massive destruction and hate of World War 2, Schuman told the UN General Assembly that the unification of Germany was inevitable and he, as Foreign Minister of France, was going to make sure that the unification of Europe was also inevitable because this was the guarantee that all could live in peace:
‘A renewed Germany will have to insert itself inside the democracy of Europe. The dismemberment of this old continent, so often and cruelly torn by war, is a relic of times past. ... Now, however, our times are those of large economic units and great political alliances. Europe must unite to survive. France intends to work on this energetically with all its heart and soul. A European public opinion is already being created. Already concrete efforts are taking shape that are marking the first steps on a new road.. …
'We are, of course, only at the start of what is a great work. … Let us hope, God willing, that those who are presently hesitating will not take too long to be convinced about it. An economic union implies political cooperation. The ideas of a federation and a confederation are being discussed. We are happy to see such concepts being taken up, and studied in numerous international meetings in which personalities most representative of European public opinion are participating. Now is the time for such ideas to be analysed and supported by the governments themselves. In agreement with the Belgian Government, the French Government has proposed to follow up suggestions to call a representative assembly of European public opinion with a view to prepare a project for organising Europe. This assembly will have to weigh all the difficulties and propose reasonable solutions which take into account of the need of a wise and progressive development.’
The next year on 23 September, after he had laid the foundations of the Council of Europe, an institution that would guarantee Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms for all Europeans, Schuman reported to the UN General Assembly on progress in Germany and Europe:
‘The first President of the new Federal Republic has just been elected and the first Chancellor designated. The destiny of Germany is again conferred on the Germans themselves. Facts will show if they are in a position to face up to their responsibilities that are restored to them and to prepare their future in an orderly manner and in freedom. The rhythm of developments that follow will depend on the results of this experiment. Our hope is that Germany will commit itself on a road that will allow it to find again its place in the community of free nations, commencing with that European Community of which the Council of Europe is a herald.’
Europe's peace would be based on a supranational democratic European Community, not a classical federation or a confederation. This was the year before the Schuman Declaration. (However, we are still awaiting the Commission to publish the full text, rather than the censored version it says is the full text.) This speech besides clarifying how Schuman was to guarantee a permanent European peace, also exposes the mistake or vain boast in Jean Monnet's Memoires that Monnet invented the term, European Community, on 21 June 1950. Schuman used it in many major speeches before Monnet ever uttered it.
Thus the European Community was the key that would ensure lasting peace, not only for Germany but for her neighbours. Schuman gave speeches in Germany about the reunification of Germany. He gave them in German so there would be no misunderstanding.
But let us quote another witness, Robert Buron, who records in a diary what Schuman said to him on 10 July 1953. Schuman described the options: Germany might make a secret deal with the Soviet Union or it could develop a real democracy inside a democratic European Community. Only the latter would safeguard the peace.
'Sooner or later, wished for or not, the reunification of Germany will happen. It may be in a climate of détente between East and West that would help the development. It may occur in a rapprochement of Germany alone with the Soviet Union, after elections favourable to socialists for example. The balance of the world will then be thrown into question.'
Schuman told him that the existence of the European Community had already caused the Soviets to stop and think about a less aggressive policy than world revolution. In Schuman's opinion, he recorded, 'the pursuit of a European policy is one of the causes for the decision of the new Russian rulers to move towards détente.'
Schuman was no longer in office as minister and Europe required a well informed governmental spokesman to speak out about the European Community. He would give 'a frank explanation between French and Russians about the policy of European integration.' Gaullists, nationalists and the large Communist party made this as difficult as possible. Today we need not only someone to speak to the Russians but to our own European citizens about the real meaning for them of a supranational, democratic Community.
Schuman said: 'If I believe profoundly in détente and in peace, I believe equally deeply that the strategy that we have traced is only realisable in practice if Western Germany remains solidly anchored to our European construction.
It is necessary to progress at the same time with European integration, the improvement of East West relations and German unification. Everything lies in the art of progressing simultaneously.'
Schuman and others foretold that the Soviet Union would collapse before the end of the century. But none of today's politicians were listening either.
Labels: Berlin Wall, EU, Europe, German reunification, opinion, Schuman, supranational
3 Why political party structures are a danger to Europe and global politics
The greed and covetousness of the political party machines will put all Europeans citizens at risk. The new political elites want to undermine the Community system of supranational democracy. By attempting a selfish power-grab, this narrow-minded minority of Europeans is threatening the European economy -- and much besides. More than ever, Europeans need a real Community approach to global problems.
One clear example is the financial crisis. This cannot be solved by a top-down approach, as it might in the nineteenth century. Hoping that massive infusions of money will wash out toxic assets from a corrupt system is futile when the system itself is morbidly unhealthy. Another case is the Energy/ Climate Change crisis. This too requires the full mobilization of all citizens. The science may be right and verified but human greed remains a factor than planning won't eradicate by fiat. No party political programme has resources, the independence or brain-power to solve the extreme complexity of these problems. Human ingenuity will selfishly unravel even a plan for planetary survival. Illegitimate party political control of European institutions is likely to make many matters worse with unforeseen consequences, corruption and low-level compromises. This approach is inadequate for the twenty-first century’s infinitely complex society.
Party political hierarchies encourage hasty, 'efficient' decisions, usually leading to unanticipated disasters. Only a Union based on an intense, open debate and the firm agreement at the levels of individuals, all associative organizations of civil society and national governments has any hope of dealing with such all-pervasive dangers. It needs to be based on fair, European rule of law. Europe's now dozing institutions need to wake up. be active and analytical, and assume their legal role in the original treaties.
The cracks in the replacement system, the top-down approach, are now under increasing strain. Their incapacities are becoming daily more apparent. The ever-more frequent European Council Summits with vaporous results are an obvious danger signal to the public. The leaders cannot solve the problems by international or even inter-governmental measures alone.
To solve European and global problems, Europe needs more democracy, not less. The disdain of the party machines and their ignorance of the original principles of Community democracy of the 1950 treaties will leave all 500 million Europeans in grave danger of economic and political subjugation. This is even more dangerous now in a globalized world with ruthless international entities eager to control from without or devour the Community from within.
The Founding Fathers designed European Communities in the 1950s to avoid wars among member states. www.schuman.info/ceca.htm But they also saw the grave danger that their economies could be taken over piecemeal by powerful foreign entities. In war they had seen the depths of raw, evil, human nature. www.schuman.info/Strasbourg549.htm For this they designed powerfully democratic institutions.
Self-assured politicians have over recent years selfishly tried to whittle away the independent pillars of dormant European democracy. They seem to think they are smarter than these great democrats who founded the most prosperous, peaceful Community and re-established vibrant democracies in all the founding Member States. Modern politicians seem to be little aware of the dangers the founding fathers faced and courageously tackled. These dangers included those identified as the root cause of two world wars.
The so-called reformers are ignorant of the European system, the Community. This Community is Plan Z, Europe’s last chance. It stands out like white against black to all the other national or European plans for peace over two thousand years. All the rest brought war and destruction.
How do I know the party machines are ignorant? Am I being too hard? Well I have never seen one ‘reformer’ politician properly explain what exactly is a supranational democracy. Who most recently told the public how the original Community is supposed to work? No wonder! Ministers are often quoted as saying they do not understand it. Which so-called reformer explained how their proposals will improve its dynamic structure by bringing more democracy to its five institutions? Has any politician of recent date initiated a system that makes war impossible elsewhere in the world?
Let's ask them an easier question. If they reluctantly concede the facts that the Schuman Plan brought Europe an extraordinary peace and prosperity, why haven't they described, scientifically and academically, how such a model works and could do the same throughout the world? Even the Commission does not explain how the system was originally designed to work. It would embarrass the present political Commissioners!
A further proof of this ignorance is the practical record. When it comes to the democratic ground rules in the European treaties, the very basis that they now want to change, they have shown no inclination or desire to respect them. Why? Because it will set them on a path for an ever-widening democracy, in Europe and at home!
We have seen in the previous Debates that (1) for more than fifty years governments have been refusing fair elections under the single statute specified in the treaties; (2) these unfair election results distort power structures; (3) the proposed Lisbon Treaty would legitimize an irreversible power-grab by party machines of the Commission; (4) the proposed treaty worsens these distortions and encourages corruption by ruling party machines because NO CORRUPT Commission President will EVER be sacked by the Parliament; (5) a morally fused Commission and Parliament will encourage corruption, try to marginalize legitimate opposition, while encouraging extreme groups with monetary hand-outs.
This was de Gaulle’s system: ignore the European Parliament, subsidize important voting groups in France with European taxpayers’ money to encourage uncritical compliance. It ended in the riots and revolution of 1968. Germany was forced to pay as his price for political rehabilitation. Supported by corrupt Italian and other governments for decades, the agricultural budget with its massive subsidies to voters remained as secret as the nuclear programme. Why? Because the CAP and much of the money flowing ceaselessly to Italy’s south for ‘structural reform’ was corrupt. When these people ‘chloroformed’ the institutions in the 1960s and 70s, the Mafia got fat. The poor stayed poor.
One would have hoped the public had learned a lesson: 'Chloroform' the European Community democratic institutions at your peril. You will end up breeding secret committees, secret money networks, and a level of political corruption that is still with us today.
In their wisdom and understanding of human nature, the Founding Fathers of the European Communities created five independent institutions that would assure, justice and democracy in Europe. www.schuman.info/supra5.htm It would make war impossible. They succeeded in spite of the corrupt politicians. In their system all States were equal and none was able to use power politics of the strong to dominate the weak.
Politicians who replaced the Statesmen over the last half-century have endlessly tried to subvert those institutions for their own selfish purposes. The present threat is the attack on the independence of the European Commission, the central institution of the supranational Community system. De Gaulle failed to put the Commission under French national control as a secretariat. The other States had a few statesmen with the sense to insist that the Commission must remain independent. France had its European resistance figures against a return to power politics too.
The present threat comes from a more diverse source, party political machines. They want the Commission as a secretariat in their own sullied hands. They learned the lesson from De Gaulle who had only the powers of one centralized Gaullist State. He could not succeed against the solidarity of the other smaller democratic States. Perhaps, say the party bureaucrats, a multi-pronged attack by all political parties together will succeed, where he failed.
By one perspective they are smaller than the Grand Charles and the French Fifth Republic — they represent only two percent of the population who have party cards. But on the other that two percent includes party members who control the government machines and have enormous influence in society. They promise a plethora of new jobs for the party boys and girls, career prospects, to water the appetite of the more flexible and less-than-scrupulous party followers.
The crux of their proposal is that the European Commission should give up its last pretence of independence. It should be fused to party machines. For what purpose? The ‘reform’ will remove any restraint on budget control.
Who designed this open invitation to corruption? The political drafters of the proposed Constitutional Treaty and Lisbon Treaty foolishly wanted to stitch in the yah-boo, confrontational politics like they have in the trough at home. That's a 17th Century distortion of democracy. The Community system is a 21st Century super democracy. For Europe it would be like trying to stitch a pig's head on a human body. Such ideological shouting matches were NOT part of the revolutionary Community system. Instead the original concept requires that the Commission should be an honest broker. The Community works on the basis of pragmatism, tried and tested steps to acquiring wisdom.
But the politicians had invented a clever ruse so beneficial to themselves that even when the Constitutional Treaty was roundly defeated in referendums, they insisted on the same thing in the Reform/Lisbon Treaty. This time they said: No referendums, wherever party machines can stop them. Only one court said NO.
How did the parties explain this power-grab to the public? They said that they wanted the EP elections to attract more public attention. Party politics would make the issues more controversial, they said. They wanted to reverse their decline with public trust. Fewer and fewer Europeans wanted to vote.
So much for high principles! But why don’t people vote? They are disillusioned by tales that politicians are corrupt. One recent scandal alleges a score of multinationals ran an expenses-paid ‘lobby office’ inside the European Parliament. Another, about MEPs’ assistants, involves millions of Euros. MEPs are refusing to publish other, apparently more explosive, auditors’ reports. If the Parliament won’t come clean on rumours involving millions, why should voters trust the ‘usual suspects’ to elect a political pal as Commission President dealing with billions? Their pal would be in cahoots with the political machines. Impartiality and budget control would go out the window.
These billions are taxpayers’ money that will be lavished at home and abroad to fulfill the myopic, ideological goals of a party machine that has taken power in parliament and has thus gained and even more valuable prize — the Commission.
Why do I call the politicians myopic? Firstly the potential instruments of democratic solidarity to solve such problems lie in the letter and spirit of the original treaties. The political class has not only ignored and bad-mouthed these principles.They offered no viable alternatives. They want the alternating competition of the trough.This is barren, even destructive. It is Plan A. There is little chance of having a lasting, honest solution either to the financial crisis or the coming environmental catastrophes by means of the Constitutional Treaty or the Lisbon Treaty.
The instruments in these treaty 'reforms', the product of best brains of party machines, are totally inadequate for the gravity of today's problems! Governments have already returned to secret talks behind the walls of the Council building in the vain hope that inter-governmental agreement will be forged with the democratic control shut out. Vain hope! Our disaster!
The public is being taken for a ride, like an emergency patient being taken to hospital. You are diagnosed with serious brain and heart damage (Commission) and renal failure (Parliament). Arms and legs are broken (organs of Civil Society). What's more you are blind and need a delicate eye operation (the secretive Council meeting behind closed doors). Arriving at the operation room, you are told that the surgeon is to be ... your family butcher. He knows all about body parts, at least in a dead pig. He also knows how to make a soup of the meat (fusing legally independent organs together). But does he know how a human body works and what is needed when it is seriously sick?
Unless the politicians can provide a proper diagnosis and show adequate training, the warning is to keep far away. You are better off without the butcher, unless you want to be part of someone else's soup!
The next debate will deal more about specific acute global problems that would follow from the party political power-grab of Europe’s democratic institutions.
Labels: Community, corruption, danger, energy, EU, Europe, global, Schuman, supranational
When is the Commission going to tell the TRUTH about Europe?
For the last several decades the European Commission has been telling whoppers, fibs and lies. At the time of writing, it is still doing so. A disinformation campaign has cost Europeans millions of euros. In total the losses to the European economy must amount to billions, possibly trillions. They began in the Gaullist period. They distorted competition and robbed consumers not only of money but political powers for a fairer Europe.
The lie is equivalent to telling a child that he is a poor orphan. In reality he is the son of a rich, benevolent family. The untruth that the Commission and many of the institutions are perpetuating is about the origin of the Community. It is about the real meaning and description of European democracy. They want to tell a lie about when, where and how the European Union came from. Believe it or not!
If you don't believe it, check the facts! Go to Commission publications and the site www.europa.eu the website of the European institutions. Under history, you will find what is supposed to be the FULL text of the Schuman Declaration. It is no such thing!
If the Commission started publishing the FULL text it would expose the falsity of the whole so-called debate on democracy in Europe. It would expose the Orwellian efforts that spent million of taxpayers' money trying to convince Europeans that 1957 was the Birthday of Europe and that citizens had been "Together since 1957" ! That untruth was simply a campaign to impose a Constitutional/ Reform Treaty that had already been rejected. Behind this disinformation is the sordid attempt by economic/ political forces to impose a new system that undermines the European supranational democracy. It broke up cartels that robbed citizens and incited conflict and wars. Schuman announced this new supranational democracy in multiple public speeches in the period 1948 onwards. He did this at the United Nations in 1948 and 1949. He spoke about building a supranational democracy in Europe in May 1949 ONE YEAR before the the Declaration of 1950.
In other words the European Commission -- led by the Council of Ministers who find it even more embarrassing -- have chopped out, deleted and censored a decade from Europe's history of democracy. They imposed a blackout on the first decade since the war as if a Common Market arose by magic and saved everyone's bacon. Coincidently this date 1957/8 coincides with the seizure of power by anti-communautaire Mr Charles de Gaulle, now draped in the European flag rather than the tricoleur!
A real democracy would impose citizens' control on the Community budget. I have never seen or heard any Commissioner discuss these matters. Yet it is the fundamental duty of all Commissioners to discuss and support European democracy. The Commission is supposed to be Guardian of the Treaties! How on earth can you get public support for a new and highly improved form of democracy if you seal your lips with sticking plaster on what it is all about? Are Commissioners sworn to silence, ignorant or in a plot against the public? What qualified them to be Commissioners if they do not know the history of the Institution?
Here's what the European Commission does not want the public to know. This is the full translation of the introduction of Robert Schuman's Declaration that was made nearly SIXTY years ago. And before we begin, What preparations are the Community institutions preparing to celebrate this 60th Anniversary, the longest period of peace in Western Europe's bloody history? Or is it all too politically embarrassing, so soon after the fiftieth???!!!
"It is no longer a question of vain words but of a bold act, a constructive act. France has acted and the consequences of its action can be immense. We hope they will be. France has acted primarily for peace and to give peace a real chance.
For this it is necessary that Europe should exist. Five years, almost to the day, after the unconditional surrender of Germany, France is accomplishing the first decisive act for European construction and is associating Germany with this. Conditions in Europe are going to be entirely changed because of it. This transformation will facilitate other action which has been impossible until this day.
Europe will be born from this, a Europe which is solidly united and constructed around a strong framework. It will be a Europe where the standard of living will rise by grouping together production and expanding markets, thus encouraging the lowering of prices.
In this Europe, the Ruhr, the Saar and the French industrial basins will work together for common goals and their progress will be followed by observers from the United Nations. All Europeans without distinction, whether from east or west, and all the overseas territories, especially Africa, which awaits development and prosperity from this old continent, will gain benefits from their labour of peace."
Note what the public has not been told:
1. Schuman makes clear that this proposal is the REAL start of major changes in Europe and consequently all the world.
2 This initiative will have IMMENSE consequences.
3. It will provide the ONLY real solution so far proposed for world peace.
4. An entity called EUROPE must exist for this world plan to succeed.
5. Five years previously Europe lay in blood, ruins and scattered with dead and dying. In only five years, Schuman and the French government were making the FIRST DECISIVE ACT in constructing Europe.
6. The European Community will transform the entirety of world politics. It will 'facilitate other action which has been impossible until this day.'
7. The first Community marks the BIRTHDAY of Europe. This is exactly what the Six leaders who signed the founding treaty on 18 April 1951 declared in the Europe Declaration. As far as I know this has never been published on the Commission's website. This makes complete nonsense of the attempt by unscrupulous politicians to try to make the signing of the Common Market treaty the birth of Europe. Absolute irresponsibility worthy of the propaganda systems of Joe Stalin and Herr Hitler! They rewrote history and changed facts to support their totalitarian regimes. They repeated lies until they made it difficult or dangerous for any citizen to resist and oppose them with truth.
8. The European Community will have a solid foundation. In terms of personnel it is small. In terms of budget (even with the inflated, political operations) it uses only one per cent of the GDP of 27 Community Member States. The USA's federal budget uses multiple times that amount. The Community has had the strength and flexibility to withstand attack, opposition and abuse of selfish, nationalistic leaders and self-serving politicians. It provides a model for many other aspiring Communities of States in the world that are empty shadows in comparison. Nowadays they mistakenly think that something like the European Union is the solution (without a Community legal and democratic system)!
9. Schuman's forecast that Europe would both be prosperous and would also see falling prices for goods is remarkable. Economically these two matters rarely coincide. His declaration contrasts starkly with contemporary prognosticators who in 1950 saw Europe as a continuing zone of war, poverty and and more conflict.
10. Europeans behind the Iron Curtain would not only benefit from the European Community but they had a right and an open invitation to join it. Schuman made this clear at the press conference. It was, he said, open to Russia. Membership would have totally turned the communist system upside down because it imposed gradual democratic change. (The Soviets immediately attacked the Community as a Cartel. That was pretty stupid. The European Community was the world's first international anti-cartel agency.) The Community was a beacon of light to all the countries of central and eastern Europe and wore away the Iron Curtain itself. Schuman predicted this would happen.
11. The Community system -- if properly understood -- would bring peace and prosperity to Africa and other continents where European powers once had colonies.
12. The mission statement of the European Community -- is to make peace at home and to create the labour of peace abroad, based on the realistic and true principles of the type of democracy that Schuman announced. This is far from how democracy is presented by politicians -- who all too often favour a system that benefits political parties and not the people.
The full text can be found on www.schuman.info where it has been published for the last decade. There you will also find an analysis and a quiz on the full text.
Posted by David Heilbron Price at 12:11 PM No comments:
Labels: 1950, 1957, 9 May, cartel, Declaration, fibs, Gaulle, lies, opinion, Schuman, truth
2. Why the Lisbon Treaty is an open invitation to corruption
The proposed treaty will make it impossible for Parliament to sack the Commission for overt corruption, even of the type that stinks in the public's noses. Here's how the degradation of Europe's democracy was instigated. Either by malice, lust for power or ignorance, political party machines are trying to block or subvert the checks and balances initiated by the founding fathers like Robert Schuman.
Over the last two centuries the European States were faced with major problems. Not only war - that was the common virus of the Continent. A violent outbreak of war was expected at regular intervals. The main problem was the ever-increasing deaths in these endemic wars. Increased wartime mortality, caused by the industrialization of war, took on aspects of a generalized European suicide, said Schuman. In reality there are just two ways to deal with Europe. Let us call them Plan ‘A’ and Plan ‘Z’.
Plan A was seen as the usual solution to a war. Actually Plan A caused war as much as it solved it. One country conquered another to seize property or booty, or put an end to oppression. But then with time the second country rose up and freed themselves and conquered the first. In fact all the plans from A to Y caused war. They were really only variations of Plan A. Solutions A to Y all involved one nation, or one industrialized group, or one cartel, one political, military, economic, philosophical, religious or racial ideology, dominating all the other groups of Europe. Historians say that for Europeans war was business as usual for two thousand years. Within Western Europe every generation was either recovering from war, preparing war or actually conducting war. see www.schuman.info/jubilee.htm
After World War 2, nations were still faced with the same choice, (when X= atheistic Marxism and Y= racist and neo-pagan Nazism plus the persistent W= lucrelatrous Cartels).
In 1950, the European Community’s founding fathers created an entirely new idea, called Plan Z. This was the final solution. Not for death but for living together in peace. It is also called a supranational democracy. By banning domination by a clique, it encourages prosperity while eliminating the seemingly inevitable descent into war every generation. Europeans chose LIFE. They chose peace.
Supranational democracy made war materially impossible. It made war unthinkable. There have been NO wars in Western Europe inside the Community in more than sixty years. No other period in all European history has had such a long peace.
At the turn of this new century, along comes another generation of politicians. They are a privileged third generation. The only third generation of Europeans who have not known a European war inside the borders of what was the original Community. They chose to reform the founding treaties. Fine. But how do they choose to reform it? Cocooned by peace and prosperity, they said that Plan Z is outdated. Forgetful of who caused the damage to the Community idea and why, or just willfully ignorant of the original concept of democracy, they say their idea of a political oligarchy is more efficient and more modern. It would certainly benefit them. They ignore the people who warn: ‘This continuing loss our rights and our freedom of expression will end in our subjugation and then disaster for you. You politicians do not respect our rights in the treaties. This proposal for treaty 'reform' is really Plan A, writ large. This time it inserts a pernicious political clique inside plan Z. Your plan A introduces the same poisonous virus, asserting control by one powerful group over the weak and apparently powerless. That virus is written in deep letters in the heart of the proposed Constitutional Treaty and the ‘Reform Treaty’ now called the Lisbon Treaty.’ In short, they say, the poisonous virus enters the Community system lethally by making the European Commission a party-political oligarchy. The other institutions of civil society are chloroformed.
This menace has been growing in the years since the departure of the founding fathers. De Gaulle attempted a nationalistic fight-back 'to suffocate and chloroform' the institutions. He wished to be in control of Europe with the Commission as his secretariat. He therefore subverted the Community system for his own egotistical and nationalistic purposes. Other politicians followed suit by playing nationalistic cards. They did not succeed. Whether democrats or not however, they did not stop filling the Commission vacancies illegitimately with national politicians only.
Arrogant politicians are cuckoos who have lulled the public to sleep. They coo: 'The virus is harmless. Why not make the Commission political? Why should it be independent? All European governments have political parties, don’t they? All Commission members must be national representatives, and of course politicians'.
Democrats, WAKE UP! The politicians are attacking every autonomous aspect of the Community system with its five independent institutions for all Civil Society; www.schuman.info/supra5.htm They are turning Europe into a rubber stamp without checks or balances. The ‘reform’ fuses the competence of two independent bodies, the Commission and Parliament. It puts both under party control. It makes the secretive Council of Ministers complicit in this underhand political nepotism. The treaties say the Council should have a higher, nobler responsibility for States, not parties.
A democratic system must protect the rights of the individual against the abuse of governments. What does the ‘reforming’ treaty do? It puts the foxes (the politicians) in charge of the chicken coop and right inside the coop too! They want the key to lock anyone out who would stop this oligarchy! That means ALL non-political people and associations. Referendum results are ignored or banned wherever possible.
The foxes want to exclude the public from becoming candidates for the President of the Commission. Unlike the USA, children will be told they should not consider becoming President if they wish to remain honest, impartial and non-ideological. Only a person selected and supported by political parties will legally be allowed, the foxes declare arrogantly. Now and for ever more. Naturally, this person must also support them, the political foxes. Only two or three people have any chance of becoming the new Commission President, one each selected exclusively by the big party machines. Who makes the final selection? The Council of Ministers, themselves all party politicians. The European Parliament run by the main parties must then confirm this person by electing the Council's choice by a majority vote. What a stitch-up!
Each party has already gone to the polls supporting 'their' political candidate for Commission President. Each party has also denounced the other parties’ candidates as incompetent. The Council designates who has won this hypocritical media theatre of vitriol and infantile name-calling. He or she will be the one who has gained the most votes in the parliamentary election. This person is then nominated for an entirely different institution, the Commission. The previous treaties say exactly the opposite: the Commission should be independent of ALL interest groups, including and we might say especially, the political parties.
The electoral result will also not be fair. As we have seen in the first Commission Debate, the election results are willfully distorted by national governments. They refuse a single electoral law specified in the treaties.
To succeed in being elected in Parliament, the would-be Commission president must flatter the majority MEPs, his pals, and their ideology. Thus, each new Commission presidency will boast and vaunt distinct political biases and a preferred ideology. An ideology is, for any who need reminding, a sophisticated mixture of truth, error and ignorance.
Why do politicians want to change the extraordinarily successful supranational model of democracy, by creating an undemocratic oligarchy and destroying the Community's balanced, if chloroformed, democratic framework? They figure that a treaty written by politicians brings a sort of legitimacy if passed by the politicians’ parliaments in all States. That will trump referendums and popular disapproval. With ratification they will say they have the law on their side for a potential power and money grab, unprecedented in Community history.
The Commission has powers to redistribute the budget. In a fully functioning European Community an independent Parliament and the other independent bodies like the Consultative Committees must control the budget. The latter institutions, that the treaties say represent organized Civil Society, are already chloroformed. Members, now mostly politicians not NGOs, are hand picked to keep quiet. And in this politicians’ ‘reform’ the Parliament is no longer a controller but becomes an accomplice. Corruption? No problem! The Commission has Parliament in its pocket. The MEPs will also expect something for their open pockets and purses!
The second danger relates to turning over the reins of power to vote-gathering machines. Under the ‘reform’ system, parliamentary elections would try to vacuum up every vote, including the most extremist ones. Once a Commission is politicized, it would try to seduce the voters of either one section of the population or the other, searching for the marginal voters to make up a majority of MEPs. For example, some parties would naturally turn left to labour, others to capitalists, others to the middle ground. But that is not all. Some covertly turn to cartelists, financiers or a religion such as atheism, secularism or fanaticism, those who threaten violence. With the smell of corrupt money in the air, Europe will suffer the worst excesses of right-wing or left-wing politics, and covert politics, while trying to seduce with money the fanaticism of extreme, and sometimes highly dangerous, groupings. In our society, all should have a voice, but none should threaten violence.
If voter-gathering machines make the theatre by fair means or foul to elect MEPs for a majority, the real object is to capture the Commission Presidency. Only one person can occupy this chair. For democracy, the most important question relates to the earliest stage of candidate selection. The ‘reform’ is silent on this, of course. Who selects the candidates for Commission President from the millions of potential candidates among the public? The main political parties! Who will they chose? One of their own. That is one of the 2 per cent of Europeans who carry their party membership card. Some 98 per cent of citizens will be eliminated.
Don’t hope if you buy a card, you will have a chance to become President! The party secretariats will help chose the preferred candidate amongst a small clique of ‘suitable’ names. A bare handful of people are the real candidates. The ‘Reformers' want to limit European free choice for democracy - of half a billion citizens - to the smallest possible number, those of the party chiefs. The people’s democratic duty will be reduced to voting Yes to one of two or three faces.
This represents the most blatant discrimination ever attempted in any democratic state. And with powerful political incentives. Top political oligarchs in a political cartel can choose their Joe President to influence the entire European economy and proposals for European funding for their own cause.
What a prize! Parliament will NEVER sack the President, even for gross corruption, www.schuman.info/LTEP.htm . The treaties give Parliament the job of dismissing the Commission for misconduct. The Commission President’s political pals, the foxes, are the only ones who could sack him. Dismissal requires an open vote with two-thirds majority! No chance of that! The majority are his most stalwart supporters. Any brave soul who broke ranks would be roundly abused for disloyalty. The Commission’s built-in parliamentary majority and the party machine would pressurize the honest MEPs who contemplated becoming turncoats! In the elections, the majority of MEPs and their party allies have chosen, nurtured and influenced the corrupt President in all his policies! The party secretariat picked him. They all not only committed their vote to him but also got the Europeans to vote to create the Parliament's majority that put this political fox in office. This is Europe's best person, they said, to be the referee and arbiter of European politics.
Thus the proposed Lisbon Treaty fails in the essential task of any true democracy: the ability to throw the rascals out! A politicized Commission President will be absolutely free to fund party political foundations and activities from taxpayers' money. No questions asked. Money calms other critics. And extra funding for the main parties will eliminate any difficult grouping (especially those for the poor and oppressed) that opposes them.
This invitation to corruption is not just a local matter affecting only Europe’s half billion people. The dangers of this fatally flawed ‘reform’ are of worldwide importance as we will discuss in the next debate.
Labels: cartel, Commission, corruption, Council, EU, Europe, Lisbon, opinion, Schuman, Treaty
1: Where's the democratic debate in Europe?
America has had its presidential election. Where is Europe’s democracy? Who should be the leader of the economic Super-Power on this side of the Atlantic? Where and how can European voters find the most suitable person to help organize a Community of some 500 million people and the world’s largest trading power?
On 15 April 2008, when governments of the EU eventually published the proposed Lisbon Treaty still in provisional form, a dozen parliaments had already ratified it. Isn’t it unusual, even bad form, to ratify something you haven’t seen? Would you buy a used car without seeing the engine — or more importantly — finding if the brakes work? Would you buy an insurance policy or a parachute without knowing the contents? Why are politicians in such a rush?
It’s a presidential race. But nothing like USA. The EU, a world super-power, even larger economically and commercially than the USA, has no presidential elections. Not even for the new-fangled, 2½-year presidency of the European Council, the body where heads of governments decide EU policy in secret.
The big difference between the United States and Europe is that the new treaty will provide enough presidents for a football team. There will be presidents for the European Council, another for the Council of Ministers, presidents for the Parliament, a president for the Economic and Social Committee, and a president for the Committee of Regions. There will be untold presidents for the secret committees like the Monetary Committee, Council and the Coreper committees. And that is not to mention the innumerable Agencies, sometimes a law unto themselves.
But with all this football team for the boys and girls of the political parties to splash mud, it will not kick off the first Europe-wide elections specified in all treaties back to 1951. Has no one read the treaties? Does anyone understand the founding principles of European democracy? Instead the so-called ‘reform’ politically stitches up the referee in the most brazen and unscrupulous denial of democracy in modern times.
Governments keep silent about one president — that of the European Commission. It is Europe’s most essential post. More than just the referee, the Commission, and only the Commission, can make a proposal for legislation. The Commission is like the person who cuts the cake into fair and equal slices, before the greedy children, the governments, chose portions. It proposes policies for the common good of 27 democracies. Competence and impartiality are indispensable. The Commission can do far more than cut cakes fairly. It can propose how, when and where all Member States, working together in democratic harmony, can bake a new cake of common policy together. When States know they can trust each other, they can accomplish positive things beyond their previous, limited, nationalistic vision. They can help each other and the world beyond, now in sore need of peace.
Does the system work? You bet! The founding Coal and Steel Community of 1951 ended Europe’s incessant wars and dismantled greedy and dangerous cartels. Drawing inspiration from moral philosophy, not yah-booh politics, the Commission must exude fairness and honesty in a Europe of values.
In short, the President of the Commission had to be chosen by several characteristics that some politicians do not wish to examine: namely, and above all, independence. That means an honest character, who is not attached to any commercial, governmental or POLITICAL grouping. He or she should have the requisite experience and, as the treaties imply, humility!
The founding fathers, like Robert Schuman, designed this democratic high authority to strengthen member state democracies. They insisted that the Commission be totally independent of governments. How? Firstly, governments had to chose the president unanimously. Unanimity guarantees some impartiality as any country can veto a dishonest candidate. Big states vetoed each other’s biased and self-serving nominees. The Commission had to build trust between States. That’s why it has to be independent, impartial and experienced. Quite often, good Europeans to act as President could only be found in smaller countries.
Today, politicians think they know better. Their contribution is usually to throw sand into a delicately working motor of democracy that still has to build up democratic speed. Under the proposed Lisbon Treaty, this impartial Commission ends. Politicians want to restrict the candidates to a tiny group of politicians like themselves. Then this president of Europe would be chosen in secret with votes weighted in favour of the big States, the bullies of history.
Early Commission presidents were often former civil servants, lawyers, professors or diplomats. They were NOT party politicians. If they had had political or governmental experience, they gave up party activities. Their records were scrutinized to see if they remained honest under pressure. However, when de Gaulle seized power in France in 1957, he declared at first a covert then an open war. He attempted to ‘chloroform’ the democracy required of governments and pledged in the treaties. Inserting his partisan nominees into institutions, he attempted to gain personal control of the three European Communities. Commission presidents Walter Hallstein, a former law professor who as a captured soldier had the courage to teach fellow German prisoners of war about the rule of law, Étienne Hirsch, a brilliant engineer who had lost much of his family to Hitler’s depravity, and Paul Finet, a metallurgist/ trade-unionist, stood up against these undemocratic assaults. These great European democrats were NOT party politicians!
Did the democratic governments learn a lesson? The party politicians REFUSED to implement the basic democratic requirements, such as direct elections to Parliament under a single electoral statute. These were written into every treaty from Europe’s founding Treaty of Paris in 1951, the two treaties of Rome of 1957, the Adhesion treaties, the Amsterdam, Maastricht and the present Nice Treaties. Whatever may be said of ‘democratic politicians’ at home, they are as slow as treacle in Antarctica when it comes to European democracy!
After de Gaulle, democracies half-heartedly reviewed treaty obligations. Direct elections to the European Parliament, required for about 30 years, were only implemented in 1979. (Schuman initiated Europe’s first parliament in 1949.) And then the governments refused to do it according to the fair, democratic rules that the treaties specified. Each government wrote its own electoral rules. These distort the outcome of the elections in the interests of big parties and the benefits the party political elites. It deprives the average citizen of a fair vote. How do we know this bias is intentional? Well, firstly the systems are all different. Yet the dominant national parties like them: many small parties and individuals don’t. What does that tell you? Secondly, if the distorted system did not please and delight the national politicians in their unethical objectives, they would have changed it long ago to something fairer, more just, more legal and more democratic. They would have examined the treaties they signed and implemented the fair rules of a single electoral statute, agreed by all.
The main governmental parties still refuse to initiate major democratic pledges in the treaties. Some institutions are still disempowered. The chambers of the Consulative Committees are filled with ‘representatives’ - not of the European civil society as the treaties say, but ‘representatives’ for politicians and parties! Special governmental (=politicians’) committees deny civil institutions and NGOs the political powers, some of which should be equivalent to the secretive Council of Ministers. We have only to investigate agriculture, an area essential for Mr de Gaulle’s political support. Much of the public funding to big farmers was until recently shrouded in secrecy, as if it were military security!
Today, who raises an eyebrow that the Commission is stuffed with national politicians? Some proudly boast their party affiliations, in complete defiance to the treaties! Does this profession of ‘party politician’ have the only wise people with adequate qualifications to be members of the European Commission? Are there no wise democratic people who can be candidates among the 480 million independent citizens who decline the offer of party membership? Do the fair-minded have to become ideologically biased by joining a party? What nonsense and lack of logic!
The proposed Lisbon Treaty goes much further towards an authoritarian oligarchy than Mr. de Gaulle ever dreamed of. It enforces bad practice by law. Anyone who is not a card-carrying member of a political party is outlawed. Jean Monnet was the first president of the Commission, then called the High Authority. Today he would be banned. He was never a member of a political party. Many people today have the same sentiment as Monnet. They want to be independent and non-political. Many don’t trust politicians. They see them as too often motivated by out-moded ideologies. Some are suspected of sharp or even corrupt practice.
Yet politicians say only they should be eligible to lead the Commission and hence Europe. And to prove they are right, politicians voted themseves a personal power grab — and in nearly all States ONLY the politicians were allowed to vote on this, the most important decision for all European citizens. The representatives of the people voted to EXCLUDE the people.
It is a momentous decision made exclusively by a political elite who claim to represent the people! It marks the start of party political oligarchy, not democracy. The proposed Lisbon Treaty ‘reform’ makes it impossible for the Commission President to remain impartial, ever again.
(To be continued.)
Labels: Commission, Community, debate, democracy, EU, Europe, Hallstein, Lisbon, Monnet, Schuman, Treaty, USA
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2. Why the Lisbon Treaty is an open invitation to ...
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Billabong International Limited (ASX: BBG)
Billabong International Limited ASX BBG
Billabong takeover dumped?
It seems surf, skate and ski wear group Billabong International (ASX: BBG) doesn’t expect any takeover offers to proceed, after the company has reportedly put its Canadian retail operation up for sale.
By Mike King The Motley Fool
Billabong bid dropped to 45 cents?
Media reports have suggested Sycamore Partners have reduced their bid for Billabong International (ASX: BBG) from 60 cents to 45 cents.
Has Billabong attracted another suitor?
Beleaguered surf wear maker Billabong International (ASX: BBG) has requested its shares be suspended, so that the company can progress discussions with interested parties.
The worst performing stock in the ASX 200
If you had to guess, what would you say was the worst performing company — in terms of share price — in the S&P/ASX 200 index (Index: ^AXJO) (ASX: XJO) in the last 12 months?
By Catherine BaabMuguira
Billabong extends takeover talks
Surf wear maker Billabong International (ASX: BBG) has announced that it has extended talks with takeover party Sycamore Partners.
Billabong to disappear after 60 cent bid?
Surf wear maker Billabong International (ASX: BBG) has confirmed media reports, today announcing that it had entered into discussions with Paul Naude and Sycamore Partners, after the consortium offered 60 cents a share for all of Billabong. The consortium had previously offered $1.10 a share.
Billabong close to buyout, shares halted
The great Billabong (ASX: BBG) buyout saga goes on.
3 ASX stocks that slammed the market today
The S&P / ASX 200 Index (Index: ^AXJO) (ASX: XJO) has closed up 0.2%, at 4,967.3, despite overseas markets heading down overnight. In the US, the Dow Jones dropped 0.6%, while the S&P 500 lost 0.8%, mainly on concerns over Europe and Cyprus.
Billabong shares dumped
Surfwear maker Billabong International (ASX: BBG) has gone into a trading halt, after shares in the company fell by 20%, hitting 63 cents at one stage.
Billabong’s $0.5 billion dumper
Surfwear maker, Billabong International (ASX: BBG) has reported a $537 million loss for the six months to December 2012, after including impairment charges, and other writedowns of $567 million.
Dividend reinvestment plans – helpful or harmful?
Dividend Reinvestment Plans (sometimes abbreviated to DRPs) allow shareholders to take part or all of their dividend in the form of additional shares rather than cash, with no transaction or brokerage costs
Billabong to surf the online wave
With Internet commerce continuing to boom at the expense of ‘bricks and mortar’ retailers, it is no wonder struggling surfwear group Billabong (ASX: BBG) is rumoured to be considering spinning off its online retail sites SurfStich and Swell into a separately listed vehicle.
By Tim McArthur The Motley Fool
3 ASX stocks that climbed more than 5% today
The S&P / ASX 200 Index (Index: ^AXJO) (ASX: XJO) has surged 1%, to close at 4,413.1, following the lead from offshore markets overnight. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.4%, while the S&P 500 added 02%. European markets were also higher, despite finance chiefs failing to agree on a deal to provide further funding for Greece.
3 ASX stocks that jumped 10% today
The S&P / ASX 200 Index (Index: ^AXJO) (ASX: XJO) has climbed 0.6% to close at 4,361.4, following mild gains on Wall Street on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.4%, while the S&P 500 added 0.5%, on hopes that US politicians will be able to navigate away from the looming fiscal cliff.
Surf’s up again for Billabong
Perennial takeover target, Billabong International (ASX: BBG) may be finally taken private.
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Friday Roundup
By Mike Koehler on October 6, 2017 in Amadeus Richers, Angola, Dirk Juergensen, Enforcement Agency Speeches, F.H. Bertling Ltd, FCPA Sentences, Frederic Pierucci, Internal Controls, ISO 37001, Joerg Blumberg, Jose Morreale, Joseph Baptiste, Lars Nyberg, Malcolm Harris, Marc Schweiger, PepsiCo, Peter Ferdinand, Ralf Peterson, Serious Fraud Office, Stephen Emler, TeliaSonera, Unaoil, United Kingdom
Interesting, more charges, sentenced, Telia-related, scrutiny alert, ISO-37001 related, across the pond, so true, odd, it can work, and for the reading stack. It’s all here in the Friday roundup.
According to this Global Investigations Review report based on documents received through the FOIA process, the DOJ approved $711,800 to spend on Hui Chen’s former compliance consultant position over two years. According to the report, Chen’s salary at the DOJ was greater than the DOJ criminal division chief, the deputy attorney general and the attorney general.
By Mike Koehler on July 15, 2016 in 2016 Enforcement Actions, Akamai Technologies, Angola, Apple, Asset Recovery, Cambodia, Canon, Deferred Prosecution Agreements, Dirk Juergensen, F.H. Bertling Ltd, FCPA Inc., FCPA Sentences, Giuseppe Morreale, Grupo Televisa, James McClung, Joerg Blumberg, LG Electronics, Marc Schweiger, Non-Prosecution Agreement, Nortek Inc., Olympus, Peter Ferdinand, Ralf Peterson, Repeat Offenders, Richard Hirsch, Serious Fraud Office, Stephen Emler, United Kingdom
Scrutiny alerts and updates, sentenced, asset recovery, to FCPA Inc., across the pond, quotable and for the reading stack.
It’s all here in the Friday roundup.
Scrutiny Alerts and Updates
This Wall Street Journal article concerns Grupo Televisa SAB, a Mexican broadcaster with shares traded on the NYSE. According to the article:
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7 Step Roadmap to Building Wealth: The Ladders of Wealth Creation
This piece was originally posted on Reddit by user nathanbarry and it’s such a great article that I wanted to bring it over here for posterity.
Nathan covers his step-by-step systems for building wealth over time. It’s so detailed and one of the best articles on wealth creation that seen.
It’s a long read, so grab a coffee (or your beverage of choice) and settle in for an enlightening read.
Take it away, Nathan!
This summer I wrote a post on growing my software company to $15M ARR (reddit thread) that you all seemed to enjoy. So I thought I’d share my latest writing.
Back when I did web design people would often pitch me an idea for a business that would be “Uber for X” or “Facebook, but for Y” and I always struggled to explain how what they chose was an insanely difficult business and all the skills they would need to learn in the process.
This article is my first draft of an attempt to lay out the roadmap to building wealth and the pitfalls and principles you’ll encounter along the way.
I’d love to hear what you think in the comments!
In college I first heard Jason Fried from Basecamp talk about how making money is a skill—like playing the drums or piano—that you can get better at over time.
That resonated with me immediately. I wouldn’t expect to be able to sit down at a piano for the first time and immediately play a concerto.
We could outline the progression to mastering a musical instrument, so we should also be able to do the same with earning a living.
What lessons do you need to learn to go from odd jobs around the neighborhood to owning a real estate empire?
From working as a freelancer to selling your own digital products? What about from working at Wendy’s to owning a SaaS company earning over $1 million per month? That last one is my own path.
There’s a reliable progression that anyone can take to earn more and build wealth. In fact, I like to think of it as a series of ladders side by side. Each one can climb to different heights in both the quality of business and potential earnings.
Ladders of Wealth Creation Diagram
(this is important and explains the concept visually)
In this model the potential earnings increase the higher up each ladder you climb. They also increase as you move left to right to more advanced ladders. But the difficulty increases with each move as well.
Each step requires that you learn new skills to overcome those new challenges. Let’s break down a few of those skills and opportunities at each stage:
Time For Money
Our first ladder is trading time for money. This is how most people you know earn a living. It may start with an hourly job working for Starbucks, but then transition into a salaried position working at a company.
At the most basic level you need the skills of:
Showing up consistently
Being reliable
Learning new skills on the job
Every job, even the most entry level, require those three things.
Then in order to take the next step up the ladder you will need to specialize in certain skills (design, copywriting, legal, becoming a nurse, etc) to gain a salaried position.
Your Own Service Business
If you choose to make the jump to the next ladder of running your own services business there’s an entirely new set of skills you need to learn that build on the last step. Things like:
Creating proposals
Pricing services
Hiring employees
Establishing an online presence
Accounting, finance, business operations, etc
Looking back there are so many things that seem easy and intuitive now (such as filing for an LLC with the Secretary of State) that were daunting to me at the time.
This is also where many business owners expand beyond their ability and start to lose the lessons they should have mastered from the previous ladder like being reliable and showing up consistently.
Which is how a friend of mine with no plumbing experience bought a small plumbing company and doubled revenue in the first year with two simple changes:
Following up with customers
Doing what he said he was going to do
As business owners we underestimate just how much there is to learn so we get overwhelmed and start dropping the ball on the basics.
Productized Services
Up until now each sale has been made by talking to customers or an employer directly in person or over the phone or email. But to truly reach new levels of income you need to learn a different lesson: how to sell without ever talking to the customer.
Our goal is to scale sales to new levels. That means removing every possible bottleneck. On the productized service we’ll remove the sales bottleneck, then on the next ladder we’ll remove the product delivery bottleneck.
A productized service is when we take a set offering (e.g. search engine consulting) and bundle it up as a set offering with a fixed price (an SEO site audit for $1,000).
A few examples include:
A designer moving from designing websites at $100 per hour to charging a $2,500 for designing a 5 page website.
A video editor charging $250 per video instead of $50 per hour.
A handyman charging $50 per visit rather than an hourly rate.
Because the project scope and price are fixed the service provider will make more on some projects than others, but the profits will average out.
On this ladder we need to learn:
Writing sales copy that can make a sale without talking to the customer
Designing a sales page (or hiring experts to do it for you)
Processing online payments
Standardizing systems to deliver repeatable quality with each service
If you choose to move further up this ladder you can add recurring revenue and employees to scale further and add predictability.
For example, my brother-in-law Daniel used to edit any video for $30 per hour, but now he’s launched a recurring productized service to edit up to four vlog episodes per month for $1,000.
First he answered the question, “how many hours will this take?” by moving from hourly to a fixed per video cost.
Then he clarified exactly who it is for by specifying vlogs, rather than just any video.
And finally he made it recurring by moving to a monthly price, rather than a per video price.
Now he has a predictable income stream from a handful of clients and a waiting list for those who want to sign up when he has more availability.
A productized service works to remove the manual work from making the sale and selling a full product continues that trend by also removing the manual work from delivering the product.
Physical products fall into two categories: handmade and manufactured.
Handmade – Handmade products are great to get started because you can make a few without spending a ton of money, but then they are closer to productized services in that each one takes time to make, so you can’t scale seamlessly yourself.
Manufactured – Manufactured products are hard to do at a small scale, but if you can sell enough of them you can make them in bulk and then you can scale an impressive business.
A product takes far more work to create up front, but then each individual sale and the fulfillment of that sale happens without much (or any) additional effort from the business owner.
An ebook on how to learn a new programming language
A video course on new cooking techniques
A new tripod for vloggers
At this stage there are an entirely new set of skills you have to learn in order to sell products in bulk:
Customer support at scale.
Gathering customers at scale.
Supply chain (if it’s a physical product).
Fraud as nefarious people use your site for credit card testing and more.
That’s just a few of dozens of skills you’ll need. With that intro to the ladders of wealth covered, let’s turn to principles that will help you navigate this new concept.
8 principles to grow your wealth and income over time
Extra time and money need to be reinvested
You can skip ahead, but you still have to learn the lessons from each step
Apply your existing skills in a new way to build wealth
There’s a difference between working for a better wage and truly building wealth
Using an earlier rung on the ladder to fund the next one
Moving between ladders often means a decrease in income
Each step is easier with an audience
It takes longer than you think, but the results can be incredible
1. Extra Time and Money Need to be Reinvested
On a recent trip to Seattle I talked to my Uber driver between SeaTac and downtown Seattle. The conversation ranged from travel, our favorite islands in Hawaii, his love for music and gadgets, what he does for work, and why he’s driving for Uber on the side.
He has a solid career working downtown for the City of Seattle and Uber allows him to earn a little extra on the side driving a couple mornings a week. It’s fantastic that services like Airbnb and Uber allow those on with a set salary to earn more on the side.
So what was he spending this extra money on? Well, he loves gadgets and wants two things:
To replace a broken speaker in his home theatre system.
To buy a DJI Mavic drone.
Those are both super fun purchases and it’s great he’s able to work extra to make those happen. But it reminded me of why most people don’t build wealth: increased earnings never go into wealth.
All across society extra money — whether from a raise or working extra—disappears into lifestyle inflation or temporary purchases, when it could be put to work so much more effectively.
The drone would be really fun, but there are so many small parts and fancy electronics that it’s bound to break after a couple years — and that’s if you don’t fly it into a tree before then.
If you want to build wealth that thousand dollars should be spent on new skills or invested in the stock market, retirement accounts, or another business, rather than burned on the latest gadget.
2. Your Can Skip Ahead, But You Still Have to Learn the Lessons From Each Step
At ConvertKit we run one of the largest affiliate marketing programs of any SaaS company, bringing in nearly half a million dollars in revenue each month.
But it’s a pain. None of the software available to manage these systems works well and as a result we spend at least one day a month doing manual work.
My brother-in-law, Philip, saw this manual work and decided to build a better platform for SaaS companies to run affiliate programs. His new tool, called LinkMink, is gaining traction, but still early.
After working on it for nearly two years he can’t help but feel frustrated he and his co-founder are only at a couple thousand a month in revenue.
I can relate to this. 2 years into starting ConvertKit we were at the same level. It sucks how slow SaaS can be.
But then I started thinking about Philip’s path. He’s got a bachelor’s degree in business, has worked as a designer, then as a software developer. Then he started working on LinkMink.
His path has been:
Hourly work for a company (in a wide range of jobs as anyone joining the workforce has)
Salaried work at a company (both as a designer early on, then a web developer)
Okay, so far this is great. On our income-earning ladder he has gone from the first rung to the second and done it quite quickly. In just four years going from an entry-level position to a fantastic salary.
Somewhere in there he also did a little bit of contract design work, so he picked up the basics of invoicing, finding clients, and marketing your services.
So let’s look at his next step, which was too… Start LinkMink.
Starting a software-as-a-service app isn’t the next step on the spectrum. Hell, it’s not even in the next 10 steps!
Running a SaaS company is incredibly hard with so many moving pieces: development, servers, customer support, legal, payment processing, etc. No wonder it’s taking a while!
It’s not that he can’t do this or that he even made a poor choice in jumping to this step: simply that he has a lot of lessons to learn and he chose to learn them all here, rather than slowly in incremental steps throughout the journey.
Because of that, he should set his expectations that this will take longer and feel harder than it does for other people.
Those downsides are balanced by the fact that it can also have an incredible reward because recurring software is one of the greatest business models on the planet, which is why acquiring companies and investors will pay an incredible premium to own them.
3. Apply Your Existing Skills in a New Way To Build Wealth
My friend Patrick bought a house that needed plenty of work and immediately dove into renovating it himself. Since he works construction full-time he was well equipped with the skills to transform this fixer-upper.
But the real magic and value wasn’t in the main house, which he is remodeling for his family, but in a detached 1-car garage that is accessible from the back alley.
Originally this building was so run down that you wouldn’t even park a car in it, but after 6 months of work on nights and weekends Patrick renovated it into a beautiful little 300 square foot studio apartment.
Just a couple hours after listing it for rent on Airbnb he had his first booking. His first month booked up immediately generating over $1,800 in revenue.
When combined with his job working on a construction crew, this new revenue stream was a 50% increase in his monthly earnings.
Because Airbnb already exists he has a product to sell (a cozy place to stay), in an existing marketplace, to a steady stream of buyers.
The best part is that not only is this making him money while he works construction, and that the extra work he put in will raise the resale value of his house, but really that for as long as he holds on to it, he has steady cashflow to more than cover his mortgage no matter what job he does.
4. There’s a Difference Between Working For a Higher Wage and Truly Building Wealth
While I love working on the computer and creating digitally, often I want an escape from that and to see projects come together in real life.
Like many people I’ve been fascinated by tiny houses for years, so this year I decided to pull the trigger and build one myself.
While it’s been a lot of learning and quite challenging at times, the break from sitting in front of a computer to start creating in real life has been so rewarding.
Since I’m a complete novice when it comes to home building, I’ve relied on experienced friends like Patrick for the trickier parts, such as installing a double-swing french door.
After finishing his own tiny studio and helping me build my tiny house Patrick said, “Maybe I should quit my construction job”—which is something he’s wanted to do for a long time—”and build tiny houses for other people.”
While it’s a solid idea, and would certainly be more fun than working for a construction company, I talked Patrick out of it. Not because I want to crush someone’s dream, but because it would be a step backwards on our earning a living ladder.
Patrick was on the first ladder of hourly or salaried work for a company. The next logical step would be to start his own company doing similar work. That actually takes him to the next ladder.
Then if he were building tiny houses specifically he could specialize and sell them more as a product — not just labor for x dollars per hour, but actually selling the completed tiny house for a fixed price. Which would mean any efficiencies gained would be his to keep.
Wait, those all sound like good things and steps forward, so why discourage it?
Because Patrick actually has a solid footing on a much more advanced ladder: selling products. His Airbnb is selling a product into an existing marketplace.
He’s making money while he sleeps! So instead of using his time and skills to create another hourly or project based income source, he should build a tiny house for himself, put it on Airbnb, and double his product revenue.
5. Use An Earlier Rung On The Ladder To Fund The Next One
The one downside to jumping ahead is that it often costs money before you will get money back. Because he did all the work himself, Patrick’s studio renovation only cost about $10,000. While it’s a great return, $10,000 is a lot to come up with!
In the same way Patrick’s biggest obstacle to running another airbnb unit is actually initial capital to get started through buying land and building materials.
That’s where the early rung on the ladders can help. You might stay at your software job longer to stockpile savings to fund your living expenses longer, or you might pick up extra shifts as a bartender to help save for your next set of building materials (which is what Patrick did).
Often it requires extra work on one rung of the ladder to fund the jump to the next one.
When Is It Worth It to Work For a Wage?
You may have heard the quote, “you shouldn’t trade time for money.” While true that there are better ways to build wealth, early in my career I found that advice quite discouraging. That was the only way I knew how to make money and apparently it was wrong!
You should trade time for money, especially early in your career when it’s the only option available with your current skill set.
So rather than writing off entire methods for earning a living, let’s break down five examples of when you should trade time for money:
1. When you are just getting started
Early in your career, the important thing is to make enough to pay rent and buy groceries. Don’t look down on any job that allows you to do that. Once you have a stable foundation you can start to pursue better opportunities.
2. When you are learning a new skill
If you can get paid to learn a new skill that will grow your earning potential you absolutely should!
Let’s say I want to be a YouTuber and are just getting started. Working as a camera assistant for an ad agency would be a great way to learn more about cameras and video while still paying rent.
3. As a step in getting to a higher rung or on to the next ladder
It always takes time, money, or both to move to a higher rung on the ladder. If you spend conservatively and save any extra money you can have enough to buy the tools, training, or time necessary to get to the next level.
4. To build relationships and find mentors
The right people will shape your mindset and opportunities. You should absolutely trade time for money if it means expanding your network to people who can help you jump to the next ladder.
5. When the work is rewarding and meaningful in its own right
If you found work that you find meaningful and fulfilling, you should do that. Even if some expert says you shouldn’t trade time for money. A lot of money is far from the only kind of wealth.
The most important thing is that you aren’t just treading water as you work for a wage. As much of that money as possible should be saved and invested to help you jump to the next ladder.
6. Moving Between Ladders Often Means a Decrease In Income
I hope this has been helpful and inspiring so far, because I’m about to hit you with some bad news: while income increases as you move up any one ladder, it often decreases when you jump between ladders.
Sometimes that drop may be only for a few months, other times it could be a few years. Let me give you an extreme example.
In 2013 I earned over $250,000 from selling books and courses on design. My income head been steadily increasing for the last few years and I was damn proud of my blog and business.
But then I decided to make the leap and switch from selling ebooks to starting a software company—one of the most difficult rungs on the product ladder.
My income immediately and substantially dropped as I focused on ConvertKit. So how long do you think it took to set a new one year income record? A year? Two years?
Nope. I didn’t earn over $250,000 in a year again until…2018. 5 years later!
Software can take a long time to get going and for years after we got traction I still reinvested everything. Now, because of the exponential growth of ConvertKit (more on that later), I’m now earning far more than my previous record of $250,000.
As you eye the next ladder to make the leap from a stable job to freelancing, or from a successful freelancing business to your next product, plan for a valley to follow your current revenue peak.
This is especially hard when you’re used to being successful in one area and then you start over in a new area and lose the signs of progress and forward momentum.
It Doesn’t Have to Be All Or Nothing
You can start your blog while still helping freelance clients. Build the habit of writing while you still have your full-time job. Or do what I did and use book and course revenue to help fund building a software company.
A side project is an incredible way to bridge the gap and cover the dip as you move between ladders. Just one note: I said, “a side project” not “side projects.”
It’s so easy to get carried away with dozens of exciting ideas, working on each one as motivation and inspiration are there.
But if you keep that cycle going it’s so easy to be spread thin between so many projects that will prevent you from making any one of them actually successful.
Woman writing and planning business strategy
7. Each Step Is Easier With An Audience
While the dip is always going to be frustrating, imagine that instead of making the leap alone you had dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people cheering you on at each stage.
Each person enjoying hearing about your journey and eager to help you make the next step.
Sound too good to be true?
It’s not. It’s called an audience.
By sharing your journey publicly — and inviting friends, family, and complete strangers along for the ride — you will create your own fan club who are actively rooting for your success.
That’s exactly what I did when I made the jump from selling ebooks about design to starting a software company: I talked about the entire journey through what I called The Web App Challenge.
A public challenge to build a customer-funded SaaS product from scratch to $5,000 in recurring revenue in six months.
While I didn’t hit the goal — only achieving just over $2,000 per month—the people who rallied around to support my public journey were incredible.
That next endeavor that you launch, whether it’s creating handcrafted products for the farmers market, starting a new coffee shop, if you share your story and give people a way to follow your journey, they will.
Some will buy your products, others will tell their friends, and still more will cheer you on.
An audience is actually easier to build than we make it seem:
1. Have a goal
The goal could be to make your first sale at a farmers market, write a book, renovate an airbnb, pay off your debt, landing your first four design clients, or just about anything else. The point is for it to be clear who you are and what you are trying to accomplish.
2. Document your progress
This next step is a little harder — not because it’s difficult to document progress, but because it’s difficult to do consistently.
Choose a cadence and write updates reminding people of what you are trying to accomplish and sharing your progress, learnings, and challenges on that journey. That could be through a monthly blog post or even just through more regular Instagram posts.
3. Ask for help
Finally, understand that everyone wants to help, so let them! If you need advice on how to price your products or how to setup your business, just ask. If someone in your small audience doesn’t know, they most likely know someone who does.
Throughout my journey I’ve been blown away by how many people step up with advice, introductions, and support whenever I’ve asked.
So as you plan your next big step to build wealth I encourage you to set a clear goal, share it publicly, and give your community the opportunity to rally behind you and make it happen.
8. It Takes Longer Than You Think, But The Results Can Be Incredible
A few years ago my friend James’ grandmother passed away in her 90’s. She had grown up in the small town of Council in central Idaho. When she was 60 years old her husband, my friend’s grandfather, passed away.
Leaving her alone. She was financially secure through two paid off houses, one in Boise, the other in Council, but she still had a long life ahead of her.
She always loved cute little houses and decided to buy one to rent out as a new hobby to fill her time. A couple years later she bought another and rented it out as well. Then another and another.
By the time I met her she was 80 years old and in the 20 years since she started, she had acquired more than 25 cute little homes throughout Southwest Idaho.
None were very expensive, probably around $100,000 each, but combined they turned into quite the real estate empire. Each returning a great monthly cashflow that she rolled into buying the next property.
In addition to this she bought a one hundred acre ranch on the Boise river outside of town.
What had started as a hobby to pass her time and distract from loneliness turned into a real estate empire worth over $5 million.
The takeaway is not necessarily to buy more houses (though that has been a great path to wealth for many), but that consistently reinvesting time and money into wealth creation rather than lifestyle inflation can have incredible results if allowed to play out for long enough.
The unique shapes of increasing income
I mentioned earlier that the further to the right on the income ladders you go the more difficult they become, but also the greater the upside. It may be hard to understand exactly why that is, so let’s explain it with three visuals:
Stair step
Stair step diagram
Most people will experience a stair step approach to income in their life. As they move from an hourly position to a salary that comes with a raise, which would be a step up in income. Then each additional salary increase will be another step.
In some careers these may be small and often, in others they may be spaced out over more time and be quite large (residency to a full doctor or making partner at a law firm).
You can also supplement a salary with an additional project (a rental property, buying an e-commerce site, a recurring consulting agreement) that will result in another stair step in your income.
While this model isn’t the best possible, it is how nearly all wealthy people built their wealth. You won’t have unlimited upside, but over 40+ years it is one of the most reliable paths to wealth.
Linear diagram
Enough stair steps that are close together will simply look like a linear growth curve when you zoom out.
So while a raise every few years will look like a stair step, a freelancer steadily able to increase her rate will look linear. In the same way that adding a rental property once is a worthwhile stair step, adding one per year is linear.
The most common linear growth that I see in my work is in selling digital products: as traffic increases, so do sales.
It isn’t exponential because traffic is still the bottleneck, but each new blog post or search engine ranking brings a few hundred more people to the site each month. Over time that drives more sales and income increases.
Exponential diagram
Exponential growth comes from when each sale of a product truly makes the next sale come more easily. It requires a product that you can sell repeatedly (whether physical or digital) that can be created at a large scale. Meaning you can’t be selling your time.
Exponential growth often starts slowly, taking months or years to reach any kind of meaningful revenue. But fast forward a few years or a decade and the growth can be absolutely astounding.
Software companies, marketplaces, and large e-commerce companies have an incredibly high ceiling and can grow insanely fast in their prime. But that usually takes time, significant skill, and meaningful capital.
My own journey to building wealth
The one thing I can guarantee is that your journey won’t be linear. Mine own journey involved jumping all over the place. Let me show you:
1. Woodworking (2003 — 13 years old)
The very first way I made money—other than my parents paying me for work around the house — was making wood carvings on a scroll saw a family friend had given me, and selling them around the neighborhood. Each one making between $10-$40, depending on the complexity.
While after that it would be a few years before I would revisit products, I still find it interesting that I had such an early foray into products.
Most important skill acquired: the courage to knock on a stranger’s door and sell them something.
2. Wendy’s (2005 — 15 years old)
I was in a hurry to grow up and wanted to start taking college classes. I needed money in order to pay tuition.
So I picked up the phonebook and started calling businesses asking how old you had to be to work there. Most said 16. Wendy’s was the first to say they’d hire at 15.
Working the drive through we would compete with other local stores to set the fastest drive through services times. I worked the cash register and learned to type on it without looking in order to make sure I wasn’t the bottleneck.
Most important skill acquired: how to work very fast.
3. Freelance web design (2006 — 16 years old)
I learned web design in high school and started to make money designing websites and logos. In 2007 I dropped out of college to do it full time. My biggest success was building a web application for $10,000.
Most important skill acquired: how to find, work with, and charge clients.
4. Lead designer in a startup (2009 — 19 years old)
In 2009 I was hired on full time by one of my clients (a 14 person venture backed startup).
I stayed for nearly three years, growing to lead their product design team. I spent my time designing in Photoshop, learning to code iOS apps, and working with a large team as the company eventually grew to over 80 team members.
Most important skill acquired: an introduction to leading a team.
5. Building and selling iOS apps (2011 — 21 years old)
While working for the software startup I started building iOS apps on the side. Then I went out on my own to freelance and continue to build my own apps.
As my first venture back into products since the days of selling handmade goods door to door, I had to learn to write a sales page, code apps, market products, and launch into the iOS app ecosystem.
Most important skill acquired: building a product and selling into an existing marketplace.
6. Selling my first book (2012 — 22 years old)
After building quite a few iOS apps I turned to writing a blog and then eventually writing a book teaching how to design apps.
The book was quite successful, selling nearly $20,000 worth in the first week! This launched my entire journey with building an audience and self-publishing.
Most important skill acquired: how to build an audience.
7. Building a software company (2013 — 23 years old)
My next — and final — venture was to focus on software again and build the email marketing company I wish I had when I started growing an audience. Today ConvertKit earns over $18 million per year.
Nearly seven years after starting ConvertKit it is what I’m still doing and plan to do for at least the next decade.
Most important skill acquired: how to work relentlessly on one idea for long enough to reach its full potential.
Over the years I’ve done so many different things, but each one was a step towards learning the skills required to earn a living and build wealth.
Considering levelling up your income and wealth?
As you’re considering making the jump to the next level, ask yourself these questions:
What rung am I on in my journey to build wealth?
Which ladder is this new idea on?
How far is it from the rung and ladder I am on currently?
What new skills would I need to close the gap between where I am now and where I want to go?
How long will it take to acquire those skills and get initial traction?
Do I have the runway (both in time and financial security) to make that jump without putting my finances in danger?
These aren’t meant to discourage you from making a move. Instead, the answers to these questions will give you awareness to make you more likely to succeed in the journey ahead.
Let’s close with one final example.
The Patel Motel Cartel
Did you know that 50% of motels in the United States are owned and operated by people of Indian origin? One of my favorite articles I’ve read in the last year was in the New York Times and was actually written back in 1999, it’s titled, A Patel Motel Cartel?
In the 1950s families from India started to immigrate to the United States. Because it was so expensive they often relied on money from family to help them get settled.
Once in the United States they got jobs, earned more, and paid it forward to others in their family to help them make the same move. The money was never repaid, but always paid forward.
But the real magic came with what they did next. Instead of pursuing normal jobs a family would pull together all the money they could (from their own savings and from extended family) and use it as a down payment on a small motel.
The family would then move into it and run it full time. Spending their days and weekends working the front desk, cleaning rooms, and making beds.
Over time as it grew into a meaningful business they would have some free capital to pay forward to another relative who would do the same thing.
They worked hard hosting thousands of guests and carefully stockpiling money. Whenever the stockpile grew large enough it didn’t go into increasing their lifestyle, but instead into the next opportunity, which was nearly always another motel.
By 2003, when the article was written, Indian immigrants owned half of all the motels in the United States.
Not only were they continue to earn great revenue from each booking, but the land has appreciated over the decades to become incredibly valuable, making these families rich.
My three favorite things are that they:
Rallied together to make one family succeed, and in doing so raised the tide for everyone.
Never paid back the money, but instead paid it forward to the next family member to create opportunity for them.
Always poured the money into the next revenue generating asset (another motel) rather than inflating their lifestyle.
While he doesn’t come from a culture where that kind of assistance and collaboration is common, my friend Patrick is well on his way to creating wealth through following the same model as he leverages his construction skills to build more Airbnbs.
Philip is doing the hard work to launch a SaaS company—learning all the skills necessary to jump 3 ladders in a single move. His company, LinkMink, is now growing quickly and we even switched ConvertKit to their platform a few months ago.
And I’ve used the skills I learned from each ladder to build a company to nearly $20 million in revenue.
No matter where you are in your journey, whether you are searching for a job, living paycheck to paycheck, launching your first business, growing an audience, starting a side project, scaling your company, or looking for the next venture to invest in, I hope this article helps to serve as a roadmap of what’s possible.
Building wealth is a skill. A skill anyone can master given enough time and a relentless desire to learn and work hard.
How to Start a Production Company: The Definitive Guide
How the Use of Video is Transforming the Future of Search
How Much Money do You Need to Setup a Video Production Company? 7 Tips on the Cost of Starting a Video Company
Media, Reality TV and It’s Effect on Your Filmmaking and Business
Becoming Outcome Independent In Your Filmmaking And Business
Vimeo vs Youtube: Which Video Sharing Site Should You Use?
Unpaid Invoices? 7 Tips When Clients Don’t Pay
The P-Word And What Outcomes We Can Expect When Mastering The Business of Filmmaking
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- pixabay.com
Thousands of Easter eggs given to good causes
People and organisations from across the country have been donating chocolate eggs to deserving causes.
James Lewis posted in Sweet Treats
Despite the presence of gigantic chocolate eggs being a consistent formidable sight in the run up to Eastertime (and for many weeks afterwards given how many of them remain unsold), they are still a luxury item that – all things considered – are unlikely to rank very highly on anyone’s list of essential shopping items.
Because the desperation of shops to get rid of their Easter stock doesn’t start until after the big weekend has finished, for many Easter eggs can be too expensive to budget into the weekly shop. It is at these momentous occasions in the year that everyone should extend extra gratitude to those who are willing to give up their time and money to deliver happiness to others.
Take the Stars Appeal in Salisbury, for example. The local charity has been dishing out free Easter eggs to staff at Salisbury District Hospital following hundreds of donations from people and businesses in the local community; Innocent smoothies, hot cross buns and Coca-Cola drinks have been dispatched too.
Additionally, the charity has raised £15,000 to support patients and workers at the hospital with free Wi-Fi, counselling and equipment.
Meanwhile, a company in the Black Country has purchased four hundred Easter eggs to give to children who are being treated at two hospitals in the area. The donation (organised by staff at Fast Line Steel Services) will see the goodies being delivered to kids at Wolverhampton’s New Cross Hospital and Manor Hospital in Walsall.
To ensure that there is no discrimination against adults, the firm has also gifted bottles of water to NHS staff working selflessly on the wards of the hospitals.
In Rochdale, staff from the Rochdale Safer Communities Partnership (a collaboration between Rochdale council and Greater Manchester Police) have been distributing chocolate eggs to houses seen displaying a rainbow. 2,635 treats (all donated from members of the community) will be sent out by Easter Sunday, ensuring thousands of children receive an important sugar boost during the long weekend.
Elsewhere, a contribution of five hundred Easter eggs from Rugby Borough Football Club has delighted staff at the nearby Hospital of St Cross. To ensure that the whole neighbourhood benefits from a boosted community spirit, the club has also provided tables to establish a food bank and encouraged its staff to deliver food and shopping to vulnerable residents.
Despite incredibly testing and distressing times at the moment, it is comforting to see that the generosity of many is completely unaffected.
How is your community helping others this Easter?
Award James
Birthe Eyben
It is a very nice Idea - so many people don’t have the money and time for this. And their children shouldn’t suffer.
Chickens launch attack during war against meat
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Stuart Little 2 – Consumer Guide
By Brad Gallaway on September 3, 2002 in Blogs
Parents would be well-advised to pick up a copy of Stuart Little 2. The presentation and content aimed at younger gamers hits the mark dead-on, but it doesn't skimp on the gameplay. You might find even find yourself sending little Timmy to bed early in order to sneak in an hour or two yourself. There is no nudity, explicit violence or questionable language whatsoever.
Gamers in general looking for platforming action should rent the game. Its solid as a rock and will easily entertain for a few hours. The difficulty is extremely easy and lacks any "grim n gritty" elements, but running around the over-sized environments is a hoot. It's hard not to like a game that does platforming as competently as this. The main character is just cute as a button, to boot.
Fans of 3D platformers should definitely look into Stuart Little 2. If you can get past the ultra-colorful palette and technical limitations of the PlayStation, there is a choice amount of enjoyable action going on here. It's going to be a cakewalk for most older gamers, but that doesn't stop it from being a lot of fun on a small scale.
Hearing impaired gamersget the old half-and-half treatment here. All voiceovers and instructions during gameplay are accompanied by text, but the games cut-scenes and unlockable movie clips are taken directly from the motion picture and have no text whatsoever.
Brad Gallaway
Brad Gallaway has been playing games since arcades were a thing and Atari was the new hotness. He's been at GameCritics since 2000. Currently, he's juggling editing duties, being a homeschooling dad, a devoted husband, and he does try to play a game once in a while.
Brad still loves Transformers, he's on Marvel Puzzle Quest when nobody's looking, and his favorite game of all time is a toss-up between the first Mass Effect and The Witcher 3. You can catch his written work here at GameCritics and you can hear him weekly on the @SoVideogames Podcast. Follow Brad on Twitter and Instagram at @BradGallaway, or contact him via email:
bradgallaway a t gmail dot com
Latest posts by Brad Gallaway (see all)
So… Videogames! Ep. 214 - January 9, 2021
Every Game I Played In 2020: December - December 31, 2020
So… Videogames! Ep. 213: GOTY 2020 - December 31, 2020
Tags: Adventure/Explore Consumer Game Guides Everyone Magenta PlayStation Sony
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StayLDS.com
Discussing Alternate Ways to Stay In the Church
Board index History and Doctrine Discussions
Race and The Priesthood
Public forum to discuss questions about Mormon history and doctrine.
GBSmith
Re: Race and The Priesthood
Post by GBSmith » 13 Dec 2013, 06:45
Ann wrote:
Sheldon wrote:
Richard Bushman came to pretty much the same conclusion
"It is written as a historian might tell the story," Bushman says from his home in New York, "not as a theological piece, trying to justify the practice."
By depicting the exclusion as fitting with the common practices of the day, says Bushman, who wrote "Rough Stone Rolling," a critically acclaimed biography of Smith, "it drains the ban of revelatory significance, makes it something that just grew up and, in time, had to be eliminated."
But accepting that, Bushman says, "requires a deep reorientation of Mormon thinking."
Mormons believe that their leaders are in regular communication with God, so if you say Young could make a serious error, he says, "it brings into question all of the prophet’s inspiration."
Just curious, where is this quote from? Thanks for including it.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57241 ... n.html.csp
SilentDawning
Post by SilentDawning » 13 Dec 2013, 07:36
Now, this article is really getting there. Thanks GBSmith.
NOt only does the article reiterate Bushman's statement that Mormons will have to adjust their thinking about prophetic infallibility, it goes further by desribing pleas from LDS people for apologies for the priesthood ban, and most of all, calls for greater awareness -- such as placement of the disavowal in the curriculum etcetera. They also quote Uchdorft's previous statement that leaders have made mistakes that are not in harmony with our values and even doctrine. There is yet another statement that indicates Mormons need to start acknowledging that God works through imperfect men, and implies this will be a change for the population at large.
As we have seen in the past, we can't expect that overnight, the overconfidence that average Mormons have in every statement a prophet makes over the pulpit will vanish into the halls of personal judgment and healthy skepticism -- but we at least have another statement that shores up the idea that there are some significant flaws in our culture and the beliefs of the members.
I want to recap statements that speak to the concerns we see popping up here:
1. Uchdorfts assurance we are welcome.
2. Uchdorft's comment about mistakes from past leaders.
3. Wirthlin's statement that there should be respect for people who are tired in the church [Holland kind of alluded to his last conference as well, about slowing down lest we heap depression on ourselves]
4. The disavowal of the priesthood ban.
5. BKP's statement that leaders should not view members are mere resources to staff the church (which you could argue counters some of his statements in the Unwritten Order of Things about serving where placed until released).
6. Elevation of Ward Council to at least the same level or higher than PEC.
7. Uchdorft's statement that people in the church have the rigth to worship God according to the dictates of their conscience.
It's easy to reflect on the things that bother us, but when I read this list, I feel a bit of a lift and hope that eventually, we might have the kind o church I can engage with again....
Thanks GBSmith!!! You made my day!
Last edited by SilentDawning on 13 Dec 2013, 21:45, edited 1 time in total.
"It doesn't have to be about the Church (church) all the time!" -- SD
"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."
A man asked Jesus "do all roads lead to you?" Jesus responds,”most roads don’t lead anywhere, but I will travel any road to find you.” Adapted from The Shack, William Young
Post by mom3 » 13 Dec 2013, 12:22
One additional hopeful thought. It's 4 pages long, but some additional good thoughts are tucked in it.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/8655 ... trine.html
"I stayed because it was God and Jesus Christ that I wanted to follow and be like, not individual human beings." Chieko Okazaki Dialogue interview
"I am coming to envision a new persona for the Church as humble followers of Jesus Christ....Joseph and his early followers came forth with lots of triumphalist rhetoric, but I think we need a new voice, one of humility, friendship and service. We should teach people to believe in God because it will soften their hearts and make them more willing to serve." - Richard Bushman
SamBee
Post by SamBee » 13 Dec 2013, 15:07
The only way I can deal with this is as water under the bridge.
DASH1730 "An Area Authority...[was] asked...who...would go to the Telestial kingdom. His answer: "murderers, adulterers and a lot of surprised Mormons!"'
1ST PRES 1978 "[LDS] believe...there is truth in many religions and philosophies...good and great religious leaders... have raised the spiritual, moral, and ethical awareness of their people. When we speak of The [LDS] as the only true church...it is...authorized to administer the ordinances...by Jesus Christ... we do not mean... it is the only teacher of truth."
Post by Ann » 13 Dec 2013, 15:58
GBSmith wrote:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57241 ... n.html.csp[/quote]
If the priesthood ban is drained of revelatory significance because racism was common practice, I hope polygamy won't be reinvested with revelatory significance because it wasn't common practice. I am not optimistic about the upcoming installment(s?) on the subject, but I hope I'm wrong.
"Preachers err by trying to talk people into belief; better they reveal the radiance of their own discovery." - Joseph Campbell
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust
"Therefore they said unto him, How were thine eyes opened? He answered and said unto them, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed my eyes...." - John 9:10-11
mackay11
Post by mackay11 » 14 Dec 2013, 05:31
mom3 wrote: One additional hopeful thought. It's 4 pages long, but some additional good thoughts are tucked in it.
It's good that his is getting promoted. I really hope this becomes common knowledge.
I still have some issues with the way lots of this is being "spun."
Church members are cheering the enhanced pages, especially the one on race and the priesthood, which plainly "disavows" theories some critics have claimed were church doctrine and the basis for a ban on blacks holding the priesthood, a ban lifted by revelation in 1978.
If the "theories" are in a signed letter by the first presidency, why the need for the slur suggesting it's only ideas from critics.
https://archive.org/stream/LowryNelson1 ... 5/mode/1up
My Blog, Many other hands
I think this is the way its going to go down in the minds of TBM 's -- Brigham young had a theory (like he had "Adam-God" theory) that was accepted as policy without necessarily revelatory confirmation. The church reversed the policy in 1978 by revelation. Then, in 2013, the Church disavowed the theories that led to BY's original policy.
This conveniently avoids the implication that revelations of prophets can be wrong, because the ban was never revelation, TBM's keep their inner peace, the cognitive dissonance disappears.
I'm also a bit ticked they didn't make this a formal announcement as well. Nonetheless, I think there's enough for a person like me to hang their hat on. Prophets make BIG mistakes sometimes. There is no clear way of determining what is revelation and what isn't as the prophets rarely come out with things they say ARE in fact direct revelation in modern times. And claims that the Lord will never allow individuals to lead the people astray are mistaken statements -- even when they come from a prophet.
That's enough for me personally, even if the TBM 's don't see it, I've been unorthodox for three years now -- the trend can continue.
SilentDawning wrote: I think this is the way its going to go down in the minds of TBM 's -- Brigham young had a theory (like he had "Adam-God" theory) that was accepted as policy without necessarily revelatory confirmation. The church reversed the policy in 1978 by revelation. Then, in 2013, the Church disavowed the theories that led to BY's original policy.
I'll just keep the 1947 letters to hand if needed. They show me that I'm better off working out my own view of God's will for me than to listen to a man who no longer asks questions and assumes that the prejudices of the past are the commandments and doctrines of today.
Life_Journey_of_Matt
Post by Life_Journey_of_Matt » 18 Dec 2013, 19:25
Ray Degraw wrote: Alex, it is referred to as "policy" and not "doctrine" because David O. McKay said it was policy and not doctrine in 1954 - after the 1947 statement - after (can't believe I'm drawing a blank on the name of the brother) a historian compiled evidence that it didn't start with Joseph Smith or a revelation. That statement by Pres. McKay was one of the necessary steps, I think, to the process of beginning to clear up the former misconceptions and lead to OD2 in 1978 - and it's the genesis for why the current leaders speak of "theories" and "policy" rather than "doctrine".
I believe you're referring to Lester Bush. http://www.dialoguejournal.com/2012/mor ... -overview/
"So oft in theologic wars / The disputants, I ween, / Rail on in utter ignorance / Of what each other mean / And prate about an Elephant / Not one of them has seen." -- from "The Blind Men and the Elephant" by John Godfrey Saxe
"The faith that stands on authority is not faith. The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
My ongoing story: http://precariousironrod.com/
Post by Shawn » 19 Dec 2013, 10:19
Does anyone have the book "David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism"? I am going crazy trying to find a source to a quote in that book. It's the quote by Richard Jackon on page 104:
On Google Books, it won't let me see note 188 for chapter 4. What is that reference?!
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Will Gatchaman Collector’s Edition work on PS4?
Thread starter DazedAndConfused
Start date 3 April 2020
DazedAndConfused
First post. I hope it’s in the right section. Please move if not.
Does anyone know if the US blu ray release of Gatchaman: Collector’s Edition (released 2019) would work on a UK PS4?
I believe it’s region A, and from a quick Google I can’t find anything that says it would run properly. I’d intended to pick it up from Amazon at some point.
NormanicGrav
Ni-pa!~
AUKN Staff
DazedAndConfused said:
Hello, the 2019 release of Gatchaman by Sentai Filmworks is geo-locked, which will work if the Country Code is set to United States. For some reason, all PlayStation (PS3, PS4 & probably PS5) and Xbox One will play geo-locked US discs from Sentai Filmworks, Maiden Japan and ADV Films if they were released from 2015 onwards.
I read earlier during a Google search that a PS4 can only have it’s country code switched four times before it then stays in that format permanently.
I think I’ll have to pass if that’s going to be the case, which is a shame as I’d really love to pick up the box set.
I have a multi-region DVD player but not blu ray sadly and so use my console.
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Thread starter glenp
glenp
"and this too shall pass"
Vancouver Canada suburbs
I am curious - Have any of you had or have family members, aunts, uncles, first cousins that have had TB. I have 3, and reading up on familiar prostate I wondered about TB.
Hi glen,
Thanks for posting this interesting question,this is not really what you are asking however I remember reading that HIV Infected Children should not to be given the BCG Vaccine.
Revised BCG vaccination guidelines for infants at risk for HIV infection
Following a review of relevant data, the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) has revised its previous recommendations concerning bacille Calmette1 Guerin (BCG) vaccination of children infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
WHO had previously recommended that in countries with a high burden of tuberculosis (TB), a single dose of BCG vaccine should be given to all healthy infants as soon as possible after birth, unless the child presented with symptomatic HIV infection.
However, recent evidence shows that children who were HIV-infected when vaccinated with BCG at birth, and who later developed AIDS, were at increased risk of developing disseminated BCG disease. Among these children, the benefits of potentially preventing severe TB are outweighed by the risks associated with the use of BCG vaccine.
GACVS therefore advised WHO to change its recommendation such that children who are known to be HIV-infected, even if asymptomatic, should no longer be immunized with BCG vaccine.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090701/TB_who_090701/20090701?hub=Health
TB vaccine could kill babies with HIV: WHO
GENEVA -- The World Health Organization says a study has shown that babies with HIV could die if given a standard tuberculosis vaccine.
WHO says a three-year study in South Africa found babies born with HIV had a higher risk of contracting a deadly form of TB if given the widely used BCG vaccine.
The study recommends not vaccinating babies with HIV and delaying vaccination for those babies whose HIV status is unknown.
Hi Glen
Yes, my father had TB - before the advent of abx - recovered after 3 years in a sanatorium in the 1930s. What is the connection with the prostate?
I also remember sadly reading that Lynn Gilderdale contracted ME after receiving a vaccination for TB
" She fell ill after receiving a vaccination for TB when she was 14-years-old and was diagnosed with ME after suffering from bronchitis, tonsillitis and glandular fever."
Mother is charged after ME death http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/8002288.stm
" Lynn, who contracted myalgic encephalopathy (ME) following a tuberculosis vaccination at age 14 in 1991."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h...-murder-of-daughter-who-suffered-with-ME.html
ukxmrv
Yes, TB seems to have been very common in my Father's family in the first half of the 20th C. Not in my Mothers though. It's given as the cause of death on some members of the extended family. Including 2 children.
I have a positive TB skin test but never developed symptomatic TB. I was treated with Rifampin for 6 months to "treat" the test. I think its relatively more common to have been exposed to TB nowadays, especially if you live in big urban areas and come in contact with a lot of people. After the original big push to eradicate TB agencies became complacent and it has come back in the developing world and thus among the immigrant population in the western world as well as in HIV patients. Personally, I know 2 non immigrant, non HIV positive people who were treated for TB recently. They are fine now but had to take antibiotics for a year or longer.
Just wondered
I only just thought of it-- that maybe there was a link with us. My cousin had one lung removed because of tubuculosis he recovered and is now elderly and has protate cancer. Another cousin amd my siter also had it. I thought that there might be others. That is interesting about the vaccine and HIV babies There is sooo much that is unknown
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History of Electric Cars
De Nigel Burton
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Longueur: 549 pages8 heures
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One hundred years ago electric cars were the most popular automobiles in the world. In the late nineteenth century and at the start of the twentieth century, they outsold every other type of car. And yet, within a couple of decades of the start of the twentieth century, the electric car had vanished. Thousands of battery-powered cars disappeared from the streets, replaced by the internal combustion engine, and their place in the history of the automobile was quietly erased. A century later, electric cars are making a comeback. Fears over pollution and global warming have forced manufacturers to reconsider the electric concept. A History of Electric Cars presents for the first time the full story of electric cars and their hybrid cousins. It examines how and why electric cars failed the first time - and why today's car manufacterers must learn the lessons of the past if they are to avoid repeating previous mistakes all over again. The book examines in detail: Early vehicles such as the Lohner-Porsche petrol-electric hybrid of 1901; Key figures in the history of the electric car development such as Henry Ford; Sir Clive Sinclair's plans to build a number of electric vehicles, designed to sit alongside the Sinclair C5; The return of the electric technology to vehicles as diverse as the NASA Lunar Rover, commuting vehicles and supercars; Future developments in electric cars. For the first time the full story of electric cars and their hybrids are examined.The hidden past of the electric automobile is uncovered and its future developments are discussed. Superbly illustrated with 300 colour photographs, many of which are rare and original sketch designs. Nigel Burton has written and lectured on cars and automotive history for more than twenty years.
Nigel Burton
Nigel Burton has been testing and writing about cars for more than two decades. The Toyota MR2 holds a special place in his heart, as it was the first car he road tested as a young journalist and he once owned a much-cherished MR2 Mk II. Currently Motoring Editor of The Northern Echo, Nigel is a former motoring correspondent for ITV Teletext. Prior to this, he wrote A History of Electric Cars, also published by Crowood.
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Electric vehicles (EVs) are an important part of how we will reduce climate-changing emissions, air pollution, and petroleum consumption. Are they the only way we will cut pollution from personal transportation? Of course not. EVs are critical, but w
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History of Electric Cars - Nigel Burton
Frogs’ Legs and Batteries
At the dawn of the twentieth century, the car industry was in its nascent period. Cars were beginning to take over from the horse and carriage, but only the wealthy could afford to buy one. All over the world, hundreds of former carriage companies had diversified into building automobiles. Three propulsion technologies were competing for the emergent market, but only one appeared to have a winning hand: it offered pioneering motorists the quietest and smoothest drive; it powered cars to the land-speed record; it was easy to start and the cars that used it were so simple to drive almost anyone could get to grips with it in a few hours; what’s more, the fuel it used was both cheap and widely available throughout the developed world. Yet, despite these apparently crushing advantages, the electric car failed to capture the buying public’s imagination. Its failure left drivers with only one choice: the internal combustion engine. Indeed, so thoroughly was it routed, that the role electric vehicles played in the early development of the automobile has been largely expunged from history. Only a few grainy black-and-white photos remain of cars that, once upon a time, ruled the roads.
Fast-forward 100 years and the electric car is once again in the ascendency. Vehicles such as the Toyota Prius, the Nissan Leaf and the Chevrolet Volt are in the vanguard of a new generation of cars that use battery power. Some, like the Prius and the Volt, use electricity to reduce running costs; others, like the Leaf, to slash exhaust pollution, and a select few, like the Porsche 918, harness electric motors to boost their outright performance.
The Porsche 918: state-of-the-art application of petrol–electric hybrid technology promises supercar performance with the running costs of a large family saloon. But this isn’t the first highperformance Porsche hybrid.
Car manufacturers have turned to electricity over fears of a looming environmental disaster. As Carlos Ghosn, chairman and chief executive of the Renault Group, says:
The Renault-Nissan alliance is targeting sales of 1.5m zero emissions vehicles by 2016, delivering a 20 per cent reduction in our carbon footprint and a 35 per cent improvement in our overall fuel economy. Beyond pure sales volumes the LEAF symbolises our wide-angled view of society. The world already has seven billion people and one billion cars. The Nissan LEAF shows that the automobile industry can contribute to sustainability without giving up our role as a source of unmitigated excitement and mobility. The electric car will represent a very big percentage of our industry in the future.
Global warming has brought the electric car – and its close cousin, the hybrid – back from obscurity. However, the obstacles to sales success these new vehicles face are just the same as they have ever been. If the electric car is to accomplish in the twenty-first century what its predecessors so spectacularly failed to achieve a century ago, manufacturers must learn the lessons of the past.
Why did electric cars fail to catch on in the first years of the twentieth century, despite their early advantage? And how did the development of electric vehicles proceed so much faster than the competing technologies of internal combustion and steam power, only to come to a complete halt?
The early years of the electric car are filled with stories of snake oil salesmen, dubious speculators and patent trolls. Many of the outrageous claims made for horseless carriages were untrue. Motorists who found themselves stranded miles from anywhere with a flat battery had good reason to be angry when their car failed to achieve the range-to-empty figures they had been promised. Henry Ford, whose wife used an electric car, was so alarmed by the poor dependability of batteries that he even built a charging station just so he could be sure his wife would always be able to get home.
But, for all their drawbacks, electric cars did have many good points. Had the electric car industry found its own Henry Ford (and it almost persuaded Ford himself to be its advocate, see Chapter 3), history may have been very different.
And it all began with the battery – a ground-breaking discovery, which came about as a result of a friendly dispute over frogs’ legs.
Alessandro Volta: Italian physicist who invented the first battery capable of supplying a reliable electric charge.
Although some historians believe the electrochemical cell was invented in Mesopotamia shortly after the crucifixion of Christ, the man most widely credited with the discovery of the modern-day battery was the Italian chemist and inventor Alessandro Volta.
Volta was born in Como, Italy, and was a physics professor at the city’s Royal School. In 1775, he took an invention by a Swedish professor called Johan Carl Wilcke and refined it to create what he dubbed the electrophorus. The device consisted of a dielectric plate made from resinous material and a metal plate with an insulated handle. When the dielectric plate was charged, by rubbing it with fur or cloth, the resulting electrostatic induction process created a charge in the metal plate, which could be used for experiments.
Volta was fascinated by the potential of electricity. He did pioneering work on what is now known as electrical capacitance, developing a means to study both potential and charge, and experimented with very primitive ignition systems, burning methane via an electrically generated spark.
Around the same time as Volta was refining his electrophorus, one of his fellow countrymen, a physicist called Luigi Galvani who was Professor of Medicine at the University of Bologna, was making an even more important discovery. According to Galvani’s notes, while conducting static electricity on a skinned frog, his assistant accidentally touched the animal’s crural nerve with a steel scalpel, creating an electrical charge. The two saw the frog’s leg kick out as though the (very dead) amphibian were suddenly alive.¹ Galvani was convinced that he was seeing the effects of what he dubbed ‘animal electricity’. His experiments led many people at the time to conclude that electricity could be used in some way to revive the dead. This theory of reanimation was the inspiration for Mary Shelley’s famous novel Frankenstein.
However, Volta was not convinced that animal tissue was necessary for the conduction of electricity. To prove this, he assembled plates of copper and zinc separated by pasteboard soaked in an electrolyte (a brine mixture of salt and water). When the top and bottom contacts were connected by wire he measured a continuous electric current. In doing so, Volta had invented the primary battery. In honour of his discovery, it was named the voltaic pile – because the primitive cells were literally ‘piled’ on top of one another.
The battery opened up infinite possibilities. For the first time, inventors could draw a continuous electric current for hours, instead of relying on the erratic sparks produced by the Leyden jar method, which ‘stored’ static electricity in a very primitive form of capacitor.
In 1821, English chemist Michael Faraday built two devices to demonstrate how a wire rod carrying a current from a voltaic pile would rotate around a fixed magnet if one end extended into a liquid conductor that completed the circuit. By reversing the elements, the magnet could be made to rotate around the wire. Faraday had invented the world’s first electric motor. One (possibly apocryphal) story says that during a demonstration for the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, Faraday was asked what possible use his discovery could be, to which he replied: ‘Why Prime Minister, someday you can tax it’.
Faraday’s peers were quick to seize on his breakthrough. A year later, English mathematician and physicist Peter Barlow produced an interesting variation on Faraday’s motor, using it to turn a wheel, thereby demonstrating a practical use for the new discovery.
In 1831, Faraday created the world’s first dynamo – called the Faraday disc – when he succeeded in moving a disc held perpendicular to a magnetic field, a technological breakthrough that led to renewed scientific interest in using mechanical means to create electrical energy. Faraday’s work was the cornerstone of understanding that underpins all electrical technology, including the motors and generators that power electric vehicles in the twenty-first century.
Four years later, a blacksmith from Vermont, New England, in the United States, built a small drifter operated by an electric motor – proving that electricity could be put to work. Then, in 1838, a Scots chemist named Robert Davidson unveiled an electric locomotive. Sadly, its practical value was limited. The top speed of just four miles per hour had been roundly trumped almost a decade earlier by Stephenson’s Rocket steam loco, which achieved 30mph (48km/h) during the Rainhill Trials. However, the principal of electric propulsion was sound and, in 1840, a patent was issued for the use of rails as conductors of electricity.
Davidson, who came from Aberdeen, set to work on a larger loco, which was the star exhibit at the Royal Society of Arts Exhibition in 1841. He named his creation the Galvani in honour of Lugi Galvani. The impressive 7-ton loco was hauled by two direct-drive motors, which used fixed electro-magnets acting on iron bars that were attached to a wooden drive cylinder mounted on each axle. The following September, Davidson demonstrated his invention on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, where it managed to haul a 6-ton load one-and-a-half miles before the batteries were exhausted.
Economically, however, the electric locomotive couldn’t hold a candle to the steam engine. The invention of the rechargeable battery was more than a decade away and disposable batteries were more expensive than coal. Davidson’s invention was viewed with suspicion, and outright hostility, by workers on the railway who though electricity might put them out of a job. Things came to a head when, in a fit of unprecedented industrial unrest, a group of angry railwaymen broke into the Galvani’s engine shed and destroyed it. Davidson’s hopes came to nothing.
The First Electric Horseless Carriage
As Davidson was beavering away on electric trains, another Scotsman was examining the possibilities of an electric horseless carriage. Little is known about Robert Anderson’s invention – sadly the details of his vehicle have been lost – but sometime between 1832 and 1839 he designed, built and tested a battery-powered horseless carriage. Unfortunately for him, Anderson had no alternative but to use non-rechargeable cells as the lead-acid rechargeable battery wasn’t invented until 1859, thus making his carriage nothing more than an interesting oddity and the smallest of footnotes in history, rather than a ground-breaking invention. Despite this, Anderson can still be said to be one of the pioneers of the electric car. The other was a Dutchman.
The first electric horseless carriage: Sibrandus Stratingh’s battery-powered carriage was a breakthrough in electric propulsion.
Sibrandus Stratingh was a Dutch chemistry professor and keen inventor with a yen for speed. He was convinced technology would make the horse-and-carriage redundant. Stratingh and his friend, German instrument maker Christopher Becker, were at the forefront of steam power development.
On 25 March 1834, The Provincial Groninger Courant, a newspaper published in the Dutch province of Groningen, reported:
In the early hours of this morning, 22 March, the first test journey was made by messrs Stratingh and Becker on their steam vehicle, which made a journey through the city’s undulating and curving streets with a positive result. The designers were so happy with the test that they feel that some small improvements will enable the vehicle to not only travel over new stone and rock roads, but also the bumpier cobbled streets, without problem…
On 8 September, the papers carried a report of a trip the friends made outside the town, passing through several villages and ‘moving with the speed of several running horses’ for more than four hours.
Although Stratingh’s invention attracted crowds wherever it went, the professor was unhappy with it. The carriage was uncomfortable, smoky and noisy. The solution, as Stratingh saw it, was to switch from steam power to electricity.
In 1835, Professor Stratingh gave a lecture to the Royal Physics Society, in Groningen, entitled: ‘Electromagnetic moving force and the use of this to an electromagnetic carriage…’. The idea for a small-scale electric cart came to him after reading reports of the work of Moritz von Jacobi, who had designed an electromagnetic motor at the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, Russia.
The precarious nature of Professor Stratingh’s vehicle is obvious. The porcelain jar was filled with dilute acid.
What they came up with was a very basic wooden platform to carry a galvanic battery, consisting of two plates, one zinc and one copper, rolled together and divided by wooden rods sitting in a porcelain jar filled with dilute acid. This cocktail was precariously mounted on the front to provide the current. Professor Stratingh described the vehicle as his ‘electric motor’.
The sole remaining Stratingh electric carriage is held at the Museum of the University of Groningen.
The carriage weighed about 6.6lb (3kg) and could drive for about fifteen minutes loaded with half its own weight before the current was exhausted. Professor Stratingh made several electric horseless carriages and a number still survive. Most of them are on display at the Museum Boerhaave, in Leiden, the Netherlands, and can be said to be the oldest electric vehicles still in existence.
The ultimate development of the professor’s ideas had eight magnets, instead of four, so that in its positive position there are twelve poles on twelve poles working on each other to give maximum power. In 1934, this vehicle was donated to the Museum of the University of Groningen. Today, it is one of the museum’s most important and valuable exhibits.
Professor Stratingh’s carriage could run for about 15min before the battery was exhausted.
Professor Stratingh was a leading advocate of electric power. At his urging Becker began building larger magnets and Stratingh stated confidently that an electric carriage would easily outrun a steam-powered rival. Electric vehicles were simpler, lighter, carried no heavy fuels and offered no danger of explosion or fire.
As well as his carriages, Professor Stratingh also built a model electric boat, which he sailed in the pond near his home. Sadly, his experiments in electric propulsion were curtailed by ill-health and he died in February 1841. Nevertheless, Professor Stratingh had demonstrated that electricity was a viable means of vehicle propulsion – an idea that was enthusiastically taken up by others.
Britain and the First Rechargeable Electric Horseless Carriages
However, it wasn’t until 1881 that the first electric vehicle to be powered by a rechargeable battery was unveiled. French inventor Gustave Trouve had developed an engine for marine applications – the first practical outboard motor. Trouve, who had taken to cruising the river Seine with friends aboard his electrically powered 17ft (5m) launch, adapted it to power a Coventry-Rotary pedal tricycle. In November 1881, he demonstrated a working three-wheeled automobile at the International Exhibition of Electricity, held in Paris. Trouve used the second cell design, invented by Gaston Plante, a Belgian, who had found a way to discharge and recharge batteries – thus overcoming the problem of what to do when a battery was exhausted.
A year later, Professors William Ayrton of London and John Perry from Garvagh, County Londonderry, in Ireland, combined their knowledge to create their version of the electric trike. It used ten lead/acid Plante-type rechargeable batteries in series, which supplied 20V to a half-a-horsepower electric motor mounted beneath the plank-like driver’s seat. The vehicle, which had two large spoked bicycle wheels at the front and a small wheel at the rear, was also the first to feature electric lights. These small bulbs were not, however, to allow anyone stupid enough attempting to drive after sundown to see where they were going, but to illuminate the trike’s instruments, a small ammeter and voltmeter. Its speed was governed by switching between the batteries in series. Ayrton and Perry claimed their rickety contraption was good for a maximum speed of 9mph (14km/h) and could cover a remarkable 25 miles (40km) – depending on the terrain – before the power was exhausted.
Responding to the growing demand for electric propulsion, financier Paul Bedford Elwell and engineer Thomas Parker, formed a company to manufacture rechargeable batteries in Wolverhampton, England, in October 1882. The Elwell–Parker company quickly expanded its range to include dynamos, motors and controllers.
All this was going on three years before Carl Benz unveiled the first automobile to be powered by a gasoline internal combustion engine – an event that ushered in the beginning of the motoring age.
But in Britain development of cars of all kinds had already been dealt a major blow by a piece of government legislation designed to curb ‘excessive speeds’ made possible by new methods of propulsion (mainly steam, although electric vehicles and the internal combustion engine would also fall foul of the notorious Red Flag Act).
The Locomotive (Roads) Act of 1865 famously stipulated that a locomotive should be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag as warning. The same person was expected to calm horse-drawn traffic ahead of the locomotive’s appearance.
The act (and its 1878 amendment) also laid down regulations for lights (two at the front, one on each side), a primitive highway code (locomotives to give way to horse-drawn traffic and give as much room as possible to other vehicles) and even created the world’s first official speed limits – 2mph in town and 4mph in open country – punishable by a hefty £10 fine. Large towns and cities were also given special powers to set their own rules on hours of operation and top speeds. This Draconian law would cripple development of new automobiles in Britain until politicians finally saw sense and repealed it in 1896.
Trikes aside, the first primitive electric vehicles were in every way just horseless carriages – just a wooden body riding on wood-spoke wheels and solid tyres. The ‘conversion’ consisted of a battery mounted on the chassis, an electric motor and a means of steering. This hybrid design was far from ideal. The crude suspension and solid tyres transmitted all the bumps and potholes from poorly surfaced roads directly to the chassis, with predictably dire consequences for the fragile battery plates sitting in containers filled with acid. Worse still, electric vehicles were considerably faster than their horse-drawn counterparts and a carriage chassis would become unstable at high speeds. The advantages of electric propulsion – smoothness and refinement – were entirely negated by the crudity of the design. As all the forces acting on a car do so through the contact patches of the tyres, the adoption of pneumatic tyres (perfected by Irish vet John Boyd Dunlop for his son’s bicycle in 1887) proved a breakthrough in making electric cars more comfortable to drive.
By the time the automobile industry really began to flourish in the 1890s, the electric vehicle appeared to have an unassailable lead. The DC motor and its ancillaries were well-developed thanks to trams, such as the Volk’s Electric Railway, which ran along the eastern seafront at Brighton. Lead-acid batteries, too, were rapidly reaching maturity after more than a decade of commercial development. Although the battery was still the weakest link in the electric car layout, commercial success would drive research into new materials and better designs. By the turn of the twentieth century, lead-acid batteries were durable enough to be used with confidence in automotive applications.
In America, the famous inventor Thomas Edison was working on a new type of battery – which used nickel-iron and promised even greater gains – specifically for electric vehicles.
According to an article in Electric World magazine, published in 1925, between 1910 and 1925 battery technology progressed in leaps and bounds. Storage capacity increased by 35 per cent, service life by an impressive 300 per cent and maintenance costs fell by 63 per cent.
A century before the Toyota Prius and the Nissan Leaf became the poster boys for supporters of a sustainable green method of transport, electric vehicles were advertised as the environmentally friendly alternative to traditional transportation. Horse-drawn carriages and wagons were sturdy and dependable but the accumulation of horse manure and urine in large towns and cities was a serious problem. The electric vehicle was clean technology with none of the smell and mess associated with horse-drawn carriages. Not only that, but the electric car produced far less noise than an internal combustion engine, started more easily and had no need of a complex crash gearbox. It was also more convenient than steam, which needed time to light up and build a head of steam.
At the Chicago World’s Fair, held in 1893, six electric vehicles vied for the public’s attention. Interestingly, the only American exhibit was a twelve-seater designed by William Morrison of Des Moines, Iowa, the rest being European in origin. The Morrison machine used twenty-four cells to power a 4bhp motor – enough for a top speed of 14mph (22km/h). The battery charging time was around ten hours.²
The American Battery Company of Chicago had bought the rights to the fringe-topped contraption in the hopes of manufacturing it. At the World’s Fair, company president George Burroughs gave his youngest son, Edgar Rice Burroughs, the job of ferrying potential customers around the grounds. Edgar, of course, would go on to become a famous novelist and the creator of Tarzan. The vehicle certainly wowed the crowds who gathered to watch its progress.
On 28 November 1895, company secretary Harold Sturges entered a modified electric in a race organised by the Chicago Times Herald. Unfortunately, the combination of a 54-mile route (87km), from Chicago to Evanston and back again, and terrible weather, conspired against him. Despite having extra batteries, his vehicle was ill-prepared for several inches of fresh snow and drifts. It came to a halt in the slush and ice having covered less than a quarter of the route.
Another electric car – the Electrobat made by Henry Morris and Pedro Salom from Philadelphia – fell victim to the same malady and the race was won by a petrol-powered Duryea. The first automobile race had laid down an ominous marker: for all their smoothness and refinement, only an internal combustion engine could be relied upon to battle through to the end.³
From the earliest days, the French were enthusiastic supporters of electric power. At the time, France was the world’s pre-eminent motor manufacturing nation, with literally dozens of car companies pandering to the whims of rich clients. One of the best known was Jeantaud, named after founder Charles Jeantaud, a coach-builder who made his first electric horseless carriage – fashioned from a Tilbury-style buggy – with the help of inventor Camille Faure. His first successful electric car was launched in 1894. La Nature magazine described it as a two-seat carriage and said the batteries, which weighed a not inconsiderable 450kg (992lb), were mounted beneath the seat. The 4hp motor was slowed by leather brake shoes acting on solid tyres. The driver steered via a tiller. Jeantaud's carriages used Fulmen accumulators that were protected by boxes. On a full charge the Jeantaud carriage was capable of an impressive 13mph (21km/h) top speed (about half that up a hill).
In 1895, Scientific American magazine quoted Jeantaud as saying: ‘The electric carriage has a future, and already in London there is a firm which displays a sign saying they are prepared to charge accumulators of all sizes at any hour of the day or night.’
By the turn of the century his business was thriving and a Jeantaud was highly prized among wealthy Parisians. Anyone who couldn’t afford their own Jeantaud could always experience one by hailing one of the company’s electric taxicabs, which plied for trade on the city’s streets and could carry two or three passengers. In a presentation to the prestigious Society of Civil Engineers of France, Jeantaud claimed the efficiency of electric cabs could solve the problem of travel in busy cities.
Jeantaud was keen to prove his vehicles in early competitions and a Jeantaud four-seater took part in the 1895 Paris–Bordeaux race, the only electric vehicle to enter. As the race involved a round trip of more than 700 miles (1,100km), the considerable problems of range had to be overcome. The company arranged for supplies of new batteries to be available at battery stations every 24 miles (15km), rather like a simple pit-stop.
Sadly, exhausted batteries proved to be the least of Charles Jeantaud’s problems. His car was ruled out of the race early on when it encountered axle trouble near Orleans.
The company’s competition cars were more successful in other speed and distance tests when Jeantaud showed them to be capable of covering 37 miles (60km) in less than four hours.
Jeantaud’s cabs sat the driver up front – exposed to all weathers – while his passengers enjoyed a luxurious carriage behind. His two-seater phateon moved the driver high to the rear. The Frenchman was an innovator who experimented with separate motors driving the rear wheels and front wheel drive. According to Scientific American (November 1899), the latter used a single motor fixed in the centre of the chassis with a differential driving the two front wheels via bevel gearing. He was also an early pioneer of aerodynamics.
By the turn of the century, however, the internal combustion engine had developed to the point where it was a serious rival to the electric car. Determined not to see his vehicles eclipsed, Charles Jeantaud linked up with a dashing French racing driver and together they made history.
The Fastest Man on Earth
In 1898, magazine publisher M. Paul Meyan, who was also a founding member of the Automobile Club de France, persuaded the editor of La France Automobile to sponsor a timed hill climb competition at Chanteloup, 20 miles (32km) north of Paris. The event was held on 27 November 1898, over a tortuous course – more than a mile up a winding gradient as steep as one-in-twelve at certain points. Fifty-four cars turned up for the inaugural event.
Having seen what lay before them, seven pulled out on the spot leaving forty-seven drivers to fight for overall honours. The winning vehicle was driven by a Belgian named Camille Jenatzy, who had entered on impulse. His average speed was 17mph (27km/h) and the car was electric. In second place was a Bollee petrol-powered car.
Meyan was delighted by the time trial and the following week La France Automobile announced an international speed competition ‘at the request of one of our distinguished friends’. The distinguished friend was, in fact, the swashbuckling Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat, the younger brother of the Marquis de Chasseloup-Laubat, who had founded the Automobile Club de France with his friend the Count de Dion to indulge his passion for motor racing.
The date was set for 18 December but the course would be very different. The contest would be no hill climb. Instead, the contestants would fling their cars around a 1.2-mile (2,000m) stretch of the smoothest road in France in Acheres Park, between the towns of St Germain and Constans. Thanks to Napoleon, France was well blessed with long, straight roads, perfect for top-speed runs. The crowds that gathered that chilly morning would bear witness to history: the world’s first land-speed record attempt.
Count Gaston Chasseloup-Laubat was confident of victory. His chain driven rear-wheel drive Jentaud electric racer made 40bhp – an enormous amount of power for 1898 – and, with its aerodynamic torpedo-shaped body, nothing was expected to touch it. To record his glorious triumph, the organizers laid on six timekeepers, each holding a carefully synchronized stopwatch, and a meticulously measured and marked stretch of road. The strip was divided into two. The first kilometre was for setting a standing start record, while the second was for a flying start figure. To ensure absolute accuracy, the organizers doubled up with two timekeepers at the start, two after the first kilometre and two at the end.
Four cars arrived to take up the challenge. They included a de Dion tricycle and two Bollees, but all eyes were on the menacing electric car. Although the bodywork was shaped like a boat, Chasseloup-Laubat didn’t sit inside it. He actually perched on top of it, exposed to all manner of danger, with only his legs actually inside the tub. As the contenders prepared themselves the organizers explained the rules: all four would be timed over one standing kilometre and then, provided they were all still running, over the flying kilometre.
The Count was the last up and Paul Meyan himself gave the signal for the record attempt to begin. Hunched low over the horizontal steering wheel, Chasseloup-Laubat unleashed the full power of his car’s Fulmen batteries and it whistled up the track, bouncing precariously on its quarter and half-elliptic springs front/rear and terribly thin tyres on coach-type wheels. The wait had been worth it. Chasseloup-Laubat cracked the kilometre in 57sec at an average speed of 39.34mph (63.13km/h) – shattering the record set just minutes earlier by a 3-litre Bollee by 6mph (9.6km/h). An electric car had shown itself to be superior to a noisy and smelly
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The Economist Magazine Highlights Progressives’ Religious Freedom Hypocrisy
We are glad to see last week’s article in The Economist accurately diagnosing the hypocrisy surrounding religious freedom which has infected the agitating political Left in the last several years. This reputable magazine has pinpointed the biggest trouble of the current political and policy dynamic surrounding religious freedom: the progressive Left just can’t bring itself to support traditional Christian claims of religious freedom—even when those claims are brought under the same laws and legal standards as others which modern liberals have supported.
As Family Research Council has consistently made clear, religious freedom laws have historically had bipartisan consensus. Sadly, this is no longer true, as in the last several years the progressive Left has abandoned its support for First Amendment principles in favor of new policy goals. Meanwhile, in an ironic twist, conservatives are attacked as only supporting religious liberty when it concerns them. We have shown this not to be true. Now, we are thankful The Economist has shed additional light on the religious freedom debate.
The Social Conservative Review: July 15, 2016 »
« Question of the Week - July 18, 2016
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The Awakening Symbols
Book: The Awakening › Symbols
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Symbols/Motifs in The Awakening Art:. Art becomes a symbol of both freedom and failure.. A major part of Edna’s initial awakening is her decision to take up painting again, and it is partly through the income from the sale of some of her paintings that she is able to abandon her husband’s home and establish her own.. At the same time, however, there are suggestions that Edna’s art is somehow flawed. When she tries to make a sketch of Madame Ratignolle, we are told that the sketch is very good in some respects, but not a good likeness. Mademoiselle Reisz often cautions Edna about what it takes to be an artist—the “courageous soul” and the “strong wings” Birds:. Birds are a major symbol from the first sentence of the novel to the final image.. The mockingbird and parrot at the beginning of the book symbolize various attempts to communicate. Both birds, however, are best known for their imitation of others rather than their own voice.. The parrot is screeching “Get out! Get out! ” which could easily foreshadow Edna’s desire to leave the confines of her middle-class life. The fact that both birds are caged clearly indicates a feeling of entrapment. The ability to spread wings and fly is a symbolic theme that occurs often in the novel.. Mademoiselle Reisz cautions Edna on the need for the “artist,” someone who would challenge social conventions, to have “strong wings. ”. While listening to Mademoiselle Reisz play the piano immediately prior to finally learning how to swim, Edna has a daydream of a naked man standing on a beach watching a bird fly away from him, possibly indicating her awakening desire to fly away (like the bird) from her husband (symbolized by the naked man). One of the last things Edna sees before she drowns herself, however, is a broken-winged bird attempting to fly, but falling instead into the sea. This most likely indicates her own failure to fully free herself. Food:. There are several symbolic meals in the text, and each stresses mythic aspects in the test.. The meal on Cheniere Caminada occurs after she awakens from a fairy tale sleep. the dinner party in chapter 30 is viewed by some as a re-creation of the Last Supper. Swimming:. Swimming appears as a central issue in the book 3 times.
The first time is when Edna tells Madame Ratignolle of her experience as a young girl “swimming” through the meadow. Here the swimming carries with it a sense of escape from the confines of formalized religion (Edna’s father’s gloomy prayers) and a sense of being “unguided. ”. Then, there is the episode when Edna finally learns to swim—after trying to learn all summer.. Edna experiences a rush of emotions: exhilaration, freedom.. The distance she has swum from her friends seems to represent an obstacle she cannot overcome00there is no going back to her “pre-swimming” self. But she also experiences a fear of death that foreshadows her actual drowning death and might indicate her unreadiness for the consequences of her awakening.. The final swimming episode is, of course, her suicide. It is ultimately ambiguous whether Edna is embracing a new freedom from restriction by stripping off her clothes and surrendering herself to the seduction of the sea, or whether she is committing a final act of desperation by ending a life she can no longer live. Water:. Water is a symbol of both freedom and escape.
Edna remembers the Kentucky fields of her childhood as an ocean, and she daydreams of the day she “swam” in the meadow.. Her learning to swim in the Gulf is a significant step in her self-assertion, and she finally “escapes” into the sea.. Even in New Orleans away from the sea, there are frequent water references—rain and the view of the river from mademoiselle Reisz’s apartment. Piano Playing:. There is a good deal of piano playing in the novel. Even the opening scene, we hear the Farival twins playing.
Here, the fact of the playing serves as a vehicle for the allusion to the opera. On the evening during which Edna finally swims, the Farival twins play again, but are replaced by the more artistic Mademoiselle Reisz.. Both Adele Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz play the piano. Adele is proficient because she practices nearly every day, but she does not play out of love of music, but to set a good example for her children and to entertain at parties.. Mademoiselle Reisz is an artist.
It is while she plays that Edna has her “visions. ” It is also Mademoiselle Reisz who appreciates Edna’s claims to artistry—it is for Edna that she comes to play the night of the party on Grand Isle. Being an artist and an individual in her own right, she attempts to mentor Edna on her path toward individuality. Sleep and Awakening:. The first night of the novel, Edna cannot sleep after her husband rebukes her for neglecting the children. It is during this sleepless night that her awakening begins. Similarly, the night of Edna’s first successful swim, she also cannot sleep, but the next day she experiences the deep, dream-filled sleep of her nap in the home of Madame Antoine.. Each major episode—disagreements with Leonce, encounters with Alcee, Madame Ratignolle’s childbed—are punctuated by specific mentions of Edna’s sleep, or lack of sleep.. During this time, physical sleep also comes to represent a state of unawareness as in Edna’s conversation with Doctor Mandelet the night of the birth, the night before Edna’s suicide.
Author: Brandon Johnson
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Human organ factories? Defense Department seeds Segway inventor Dean Kamen’s ambitious project, but success seems years away
Liz Brody | OneZero | July 2, 2020
Credit: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
[N]one of [Dean Kamen’s] many inventions — including the Segway — has an impact that comes close to what could be accomplished by the most ambitious project of Kamen’s career: building human organ factories.
Kamen [started] the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI), a nonprofit consortium of some 170 companies, research institutions, and organizations from across the country that pay an annual fee, provide equipment, or contribute in other ways in exchange for sharing research and resources. Including the DoD grant, the project is funded to the tune of about $300 million.
Plenty of scientists are trying to grow organs. But what sets Kamen’s group apart is that he’s working a step ahead: He’s making the tools and machinery to mass-produce those organs, if and when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves them for patients. He wants to pump out hearts and kidneys much the same way factories produce smartphones: in high-tech assembly lines.
Related article: 3D printed organs: We're closer to solving the problem of how to supply them with blood
Many internal organs … have yet to be grown in a lab, much less put into a patient; even the bioengineering of most tissues like muscles and ligaments is still in the early research stage.
Kamen knows there are doubters. Throughout his career he’s paid little attention to them. “Will it take 50 years? Absolutely not,”’ he says. “Will it be 25? Five? It’s not going to be a bright line.” He stands by his bet that “within 10 years it will be as common as a lot of standard medical procedures to have a defective organ or piece of an organ replaced.”
Read the original post
Viewpoint: Are GMOs a corporate ploy to colonize developing countries? Is vitamin-A enhanced Golden Rice a plot by ‘Western entities’ to control global agriculture? Here are the facts bungled in Slate commentary.
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Geoffrey Lovelace
Associate Professor of Physics
My GitHub Page Hosted on GitHub Pages — Theme by mattgraham
Contact About me Research Publications
CV Support Teaching Movies
McCarthy Hall 601B
Email glovelace@fullerton.edu
Department of Physics, MH-611
800 North State College Blvd.
I am an associate professor in the Department of Physics at California State University, Fullerton. My current research interests focus on using numerical relativity to model sources of gravitational waves, such as merging black holes. I join professors Jocelyn Read, Josh Smith, and Al Agnew in Cal State Fullerton’s Gravitational Wave Physics and Astronomy Center (GWPAC), and I also am a member of the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) collaboration and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.
GWPAC and the SXS collaboration are contributing to LIGO’s discovery of gravitational waves.
At Cal State Fullerton, my research goals focus on modeling sources of gravitational waves using numerical relativity. Gravitational waves—ripples of spacetime curvature—are opening a new window on the universe. The Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (Advanced LIGO) has observed the first gravitational waves passing through Earth, which came from merging black holes. My students and I use supercomputers to simulate colliding black holes using the Spectral Einstein Code (SpEC), and we are particularly interested in modeling merging black holes that spin nearly as fast as possible and in responding to LIGO observations. I recently have begun using supercomputers to model thermal noise in LIGO mirrors, with the goal of helping to improve the sensitivity of next-generation detectors, and exploring how well gravitatioanl-wave detectors can measure rapid black-hole spins.
I am contributing to the development of SpECTRE, the SXS Collaboration’s next-generation numerical-relativity code. Jocelyn Read, Josh Smith, and I area also contributing to charting a course for the next generation of gravitational-wave science in the United Sates, looking at concepts like Cosmic Explorer.
Starting in 2018, I am leading an annual one-week summer workshop that introduces students from local community colleges to gravitational waves and high-performance computing.
My up-to-date publication list is available through my full CV, Google Scholar and INSPIRES.
You can download my full CV in PDF format, including links to my publications.
My students and I are grateful to thank the National Science Foundation, the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, California State University, Fullerton, Dan Black, and Nancy Goodhue-McWilliams. Our research is supported in part by the following external grants:
NSF grant PHY-1836734. Collaborative Research: The Next Generation of Gravitational Wave Detectors.
NSF grant PHY-1708035. Collaborative Research: LSC Center for Coatings Research.
NSF grant PHY-1654359. CAREER: Computational Gravitational-Wave Science and Education in the Era of First Observations.
NSF grant PHY-1606522. RUI: Computational Gravitational-Wave Research for the Era of First Observations.
NSF grant AST-1559694. The CSUF-Syracuse partnership for inclusion of underrepresented groups in gravitational-wave astronomy.
Our work has also been supported in the past by the following external grants:
NSF grant PHY-1429873. MRI: Acquisition of a High-Performance Computer Cluster for Gravitational-Wave Astronomy with Advanced LIGO.
Multi-investigator Cottrell College Science Award. Developing a numerical injection analysis pipeline for gravitational waves from merging black holes and neutron stars.
NSF grant PHY-1307489. RUI: Numerical Simulations of Merging Black Holes and Neutron Stars.
I have taught the following courses:
Astronomy 444, “Applications of Gravitation,” a new course for advanced undergraduates that I am piloting, focusing on some applications of general relativity: black holes, gravitational waves, and cosmology.
Physics 211, “Elementary Physics,” an algebra-based introduction to mechanics and thermodynamics.
Physics 211L, “Elementary Physics Laboratory”, the laboratory co-requisite to Physics 211.
Physics 225, “Fundamental Physics,” a calculus-based introduction to mechanics. I have redesigned this course using a flipped classroom, supported in part by the CSU Sustaining Success and Proven Course Resdesign redesign programs.
Physics 300, “Survey of Mathematical Physics”, a course that bridges the under-division and upper-division undergraduate physics major courses, introducing key mathematical tools while emphasizing how to think about math like a physicist.
Physics 520, “Analytical Mechanics,” a master’s-level course in classical mechanics and special relativity.
What merging black holes look like
The source of LIGO’s first observation of gravitational waves was a pair of merging black holes. This movie shows what the merging black holes would look like up close, in slow motion (about 100 times slower than real time). Credit: SXS Collaboration.
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Getapkmarkets
Home Health 5 Outdoorsy Rules for Eluding Sporty Injuries
5 Outdoorsy Rules for Eluding Sporty Injuries
abdul manan
Having participated in the outdoorsy games seems and sounds fun. But that outdoorsy activity isn’t immune to injuries at all. Every injury is possible. Injuries can be stopped though by following expert-sanctioned outdoorsy rules. It can diminish up to 80% of sporty injuries ordained on the sports ground during the play. These sporty injuries can be halted by watching out for the rules of the game, watching out for others at the game, wearing a safety kit & Sports Sunglasses based on the game’s portfolio.
Warming up Prior to Game.
Don’t start your game before you have warmed up yourself at best. Playing the game with a warmed-up physique has more benefits for the audience. Warming up before the game gives you two advantages. First, it bears the aspect of avoiding any injury possible on the playfield. You are physically active and viable to play the game after the warmup. Before that, don’t plunge into the game. Second, it increases your productivity in the game. A warmed up player is more efficacious and effective for the team than a player without warming up. Warming up helps you in maintaining good blood flow in your body. It also helps in maintaining the stretch of muscles of your body before the game. That stretch in the warmup saves from injuries, dislocation of joints, overstretch of muscles, and dislocation of muscles during the game. The stretching problems during the game can last up to weeks and can disturb fitness and game equally.
Staying Hydrated.
Staying warmed up during the game is equivocally important. But staying hydrated at the game is also part of primacy for a good game. Keep yourself hydrated with not just water but multifarious fluids. These fluids would keep you hydrated during the games. Because during the games, getting dehydrated at the game might happen when you are least expecting it. Use energy and water fluids during the breaks of the game to revitalize your energy level and your hydration levels in the games. Staying hydrated is directly proportional to your performance on the playground.
Wearing Safety Kit.
The most important and vital part of playing like pros and professionals is to play like it is mandated. Safety kit comes chronically on top of mind based on features of the game. I.e. during playing baseball, a safety kit is mandatory. Playing cricket, a safety kit is mandatory. The multifarious game supports a safety kit for players. Safety specs, safety pads, gloves, safety kits, and a lot of pertinent things are part of the Safety Kit for the organization. Protective gear is almost mandatory in a lot of games including Riding, Racing, Baseball, Hockey, Softball, and football. Helmet, eyewear gear is the most important safety gear often used in gaming. Wiley X Sunglasses Price matches with safety gear as the popular specs in the industry. Complete the safety gear before landing on the playground and make it compulsory each time. Safety gear is the gear of performance and safety from injuries.
Quitting on Injury.
Try to avoid the injuries to every possible means at the playground. Because when an injury hits you, you are of no use to the team. Don’t put yourself into the No-use paradigm in the first place. If unfortunately and accidentally it happens, quit the game at once. Don’t pursue the furtherance in the game. Don’t keep playing the game. It would make the injury even worse for you. The more you keep playing when injured, the more you are extending the healing time for your injury.
Watching out for Others.
Playing recklessly on the sports ground gives you no guarantee that you might end injuring others during the sport as well yourself. 34% of injuries happen due to the recklessness of players of the opposite team. The injuries from self-made mistakes are lesser in ratio. That’s why, while you perform at your game during the play, watch out carefully for others as well. The aim is to win. The aim isn’t to injure the opponent on the playground. Before starting playing the games, watch out for all the rules and regulations necessary for the game. Follow those rules. Play like a gentleman on the playground. Play like a complaint sportsman on the field by watching out for others in the best means viable. Watch out for the audience as well. As so many reports of injuries during the baseball match are reported. The participants were injured due to a misfit throw of the bat in the game. Avoid the collision with players of opposite teams to as extended as possible. A professional game indeed bears no injuries.
Rules for Eluding Sporty Injuries
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Ocean Power Technologies Heads to Australia
David Ehrlich Dec 19, 2008 - 3:00 PM CST
New Jersey’s Ocean Power Technologies (s OPTT) said today it’s signed an agreement with Australia’s Leighton Contractors to develop wave power projects off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
This is the latest in a number of deals for Ocean Power over the past year. Last month, the company signed a contract under the U.S. Navy’s Deep Water Active Detection Systems program. That’s its second contract with the Navy for the data gathering and communications project, with both deals worth a total of $5 million for Ocean Power. And in September, Spanish utility Iberdrola deployed a PowerBuoy from Ocean Power off the coast of Spain, with Ocean Power calling it the world’s first commercial utility-scale wave power generation venture.
Ocean Power’s PowerBuoy has a piston that moves as the buoy rises and falls with the waves, driving a generator that produces electricity.
The companies may still have a lot of legwork to do before they can release any details about the project, however. Ocean Power will first work on identifying potential project sites and assessing their commercial prospects. Once those sites are picked, Leighton, an engineering and construction services firm, will work on obtaining government approvals, negotiating power purchase agreements, and structuring the project financing.
Leighton will also oversee project delivery and operation of the wave power stations, with Ocean Power selling its PowerBuoy systems to companies formed by Leighton for the projects, but Ocean Power didn’t say how many projects they expect to set up or how much power they’ll generate.
Leighton also signed a deal today with Germany’s MAN Solar Millennium to set up solar thermal power plants in Australia. There weren’t any details on the financial terms of that deal, either, nor did Leighton say how many plants they plan to build. MAN Solar, a joint venture of MAN Ferrostaal and Solar Millennium, was formed to construct and finance large-scale solar thermal power plants with a capacity of 50-250 megawatts. MAN Solar is currently working on the 50-MW Andasol 3 solar thermal plant in southern Spain.
Leighton Contractors
Ocean Power Technologies
OPTT
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Last edited by Akilmaran
2 edition of Lawn tennis the Australian Way found in the catalog.
Lawn tennis the Australian Way
Pollard, Jack.
by Pollard, Jack.
Published 1964 by Angus and Robertson in [s.l.] .
Statement edited by Jack Pollard.
The underhanded serve, although legal at every level of tennis, is very rarely used in practice, except by young children (when starting out, most young children are encouraged to use an underhanded serve until they are old enough to learn an overhead serve). The 4 Types of Tennis Serves. the flat serve; the slice serve; the kick serve. The Big Difference Between Real Tennis and Lawn Tennis. A couple of days ago, Andy Murray beat the giant two metres six centimetres, John Isner, in the Australian Open in Melbourne. Andy Murray himself is not short being about metres. If you do want it in those useless Imperial measures that only cause confusion, that six foot three.
Introduction. There have been many books written about the history of tennis with a focus on the UK and the USA. In Australia, unlike other local sports like Football, Rugby and Cricket, Tennis has suffered from a void where much of the history has simply vanished or . Book your tickets online for Australian Open, Melbourne: See reviews, articles, and photos of Australian Open, ranked No on Tripadvisor among attractions in Melbourne/ TripAdvisor reviews.
Lawn tennis, its principles & practice: A player's guide to modern methods: with over seventy illustrations (The Lonsdale library of sports, games & pasttimes) [Myers, Arthur Wallis] on *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Lawn tennis, its principles & practice: A player's guide to modern methods: with over seventy illustrations (The Lonsdale library of sportsAuthor: Arthur Wallis Myers. The International Tennis Federation (ITF) is the world governing body of tennis. Find out more about the ITF as an organisation and about what we do.
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Lawn tennis the Australian Way by Pollard, Jack. Download PDF EPUB FB2
Lawn tennis; the Australian way Hardcover – January 1, by Jack Pollard (Author) See all formats and editions Hide other formats and editions. Price New from Used from Hardcover "Please retry" $ $ $ Hardcover, January 1, $ — Author: Jack Pollard.
LAWN TENNIS - THE AUSTRALIAN WAY First Edition published Edited by: JACK POLLARD Drawings by: WILL MAHONY Foreward by: SIR NORMAN BROOKES Condition: BOOK - SUPERIOR: DUST JACKET - FAIR Pages: Size: LARGE HARDBACK This book comprises stories told by 22 distinguished Australian tennis personalities, accompanied by a fabulous selection of photos.
Lawn Tennis The Australian Way Edited By Jack Pollard + The Book Of Wimbledon AU $ Shipping: + AU $ Shipping AUSTRALIAN BIOGRAPHY, MY LIFE WITH LEW (HOAD) by JENNY HOAD & JACK POLLARD. "Lawn Bowls: The Australian Way", Ed.
Jack Pollard,Hard Cover. All three books are in excellent condition, including the dust wrapper on the hard back one. Can be collected from Highgate Hill or posted for $ within Australia. Tennis originally was known as lawn tennis, and formally still is in Britain, because it was played on grass courts by Victorian gentlemen and is now played on a variety of surfaces.
The origins of the game can be traced to a 12th–13th-century French handball game called jeu de paume (“game of the palm”), from which was derived a complex indoor racket-and-ball game: real tennis.
US Open and Australian Open are played on hard surfaces. Paris Masters is another tournament that is played on carpet surface which is a removable court.
Dimensions of a Tennis Lawn All tennis courts should be rectangular in shape. As the sport is played in different formats, Singles and Doubles; the breadth of the court varies with length. A Complete Guide To Lawn Tennis. High Tea and sandwiches while watching two players play or smashing it out on the court as a Lawn Tennis pro.
This ancient sport has a quaint aura to it that can never go out of style, and besides having a rich history and legacy attached to its origin and development, Lawn Tennis is an intricate and power packed game that requires immense skill and years of.
American Lawn Tennis; 1 st Edition; pages. A classic and scarce book on the early days of the Davis Cup. ‘A picturesque record of the first 25 years’ struggle for International supremacy in lawn tennis, whose first ripples in have steadily widened until 25 different nations contest each year for the famous trophy.
2 days ago The Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) has reported a staggering per cent increase in court bookings from the beginning of May to the end of July compared to the same period last year. Extending to over pages, the book includes biographies of the players and tournament officials, with masses of information on manufacturers, a comparison of the rules, and a time-line of lawn tennis related events.
Fully indexed, it will be a book desired by all tennis history loving fans and bibliophiles. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society and at all ages.
The sport can be played by anyone who can hold a racket, including wheelchair modern game of tennis originated in Birmingham, England, in the late 19th century as lawn tennis. It had close connections both to various field (lawn) games such as croquet and bowls as well as to the older racket sport.
The Art of Lawn Tennis by William T. Tilden, 2D September, [Etext #] The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Art of Lawn Tennis, by Tilden *****This file should be named tenistxt or teniszip***** Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, tenistxt VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, Trove: Find and get Australian resources.
Books, images, historic newspapers, maps, archives and more. Libraries Australia: In the Lawn Tennis Association adopted a trading name: Tennis Australia. Works by these bodies are found under the name used at the time of publication.
— TENNIS (@Tennis) Febru Ashe, who was the first Black man to win the Australian Open, US Open and Wimbledon, looked up to Ryland while growing up, and once said his.
Learning from experience (of wins and losses) is the ONLY way to become an expert tennis player, whether this is at club level or at a world-class level. Players should have around a to win/loss ratio to learn from mistakes, learn from what works well, play tough opponents, play weaker opponents and other situations.
This game was played on the lawn of Leamington resort and this was the main reason why it is called Lawn Tennis or Tennis on a lawn. The rules for Tennis was first established by a British army personnel Walter Clopton Wingfield.
People started calling it Lawn Tennis from He was the person who patented the game and set the rules to play. History. The Australian Open is managed by Tennis Australia, formerly the Lawn Tennis Association of Australia (LTAA), and was first played at the Warehouseman's Cricket Ground in Melbourne in November This facility is now known as the Albert Reserve Tennis Centre and was a grass court.
The tournament was first known as the Australasian Championships. The game we know as tennis today grew out of an adaptation called lawn tennis to distinguish it from the older indoor version, “real” or royal tennis.
(In the U.S. that older version goes by. It feels like a grim game of TattsLotto, in a way. The younger kids [Aidan and Oscar] are handling it quite well, though being away from their friends again is hard. Lawn Tennis Association of Australasia (LTAA) was the tennis organisation formed after the amalgamation of New Zealand Lawn Tennis Association (now Tennis New Zealand) and six Australian state tennis associations in New Zealand split from the tennis association partnership in and hence caused dissolution of LTAA.
LTAA was the founding member of the International Lawn Tennis. In women's professional tennis, players generally must win two out of three sets to win the match. If you're a beginner, do yourself a favor: Whether you're male or female, decide that the victor will be the player who wins two out of three sets.
Your tired feet—and potential tennis .Tennis bookings has made the difference from our club being an average club to becoming a club with the most advanced online booking system. It is very easy to use as an administrator as well as a client." Alex Vlaski Director and Head Coach AV Performance Tennis Club.
driftwood-dallas.com - Lawn tennis the Australian Way book © 2020
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Censorship, Government & Policy, Social Media
Social media crackdown continues after siege of US Capitol
January 13, 2021 David Goldstein Leave a comment
Social media platforms are continuing to crack down on fringe groups and conspiracy theories following last week’s deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Twitter suspended more than 70,000 accounts associated with the far right QAnon conspiracy and Facebook is removing posts and content fraudulently claiming that the U.S. election was stolen as social media companies scramble to rein in harmful activity ahead of the presidential inauguration on Jan. 20.
To continue reading this Associated Press report, go to:
https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-conspiracy-theories-media-inaugurations-elections-b9bce4774cee905d2250893cfec6bf6f
Twitter, in Widening Crackdown, Removes Over 70,000 QAnon Accounts
Twitter on Monday said that it had removed more than 70,000 accounts that promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory in recent days, as the company widened its crackdown on content that could incite violence after barring President Trump from its service last week.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/technology/twitter-removes-70000-qanon-accounts.html
Twitter purged more than 70,000 accounts affiliated with QAnon following Capitol riot
Twitter said late Monday it purged more than 70,000 accounts affiliated with conspiracy theory QAnon following the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol last week.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/11/trump-twitter-ban/
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Phoenix Labs establishes two new studios, Dauntless 'Reforged’ expansion update coming Dec. 3rd
"Experience the Shattered Isles like never before."
Vancouver, B.C. – Today Phoenix Labs announced the establishment of two new studios in Montreal, Quebec and Los Angeles, California. These studios, along with new teams in its Vancouver and San Mateo locations, demonstrate Phoenix Labs’ vision for empowering and supporting teams as they embark on the journey of developing new games.
2020 has been a pivotal year for Phoenix Labs as it increased its headcount by more than 50 developers. The company expects to reach 250 employees by the end of 2021 to support new game prototypes across studios, while continuing to support the expansion of Dauntless.
“At Phoenix Labs, we believe people are the ends, not the means. We aspire to bring joy and delight to players for years to come by providing developers with a long-term home to create the world’s most compelling gaming experiences. We believe in empowering our people with high autonomy so they can make broad impacts to their games and the studio,” says Jesse Houston, CEO and co-founder, Phoenix Labs. “Montreal and Los Angeles are home to vibrant gaming communities that include some of the best talent in the industry, and we’re excited to have them contribute to our mosaic culture. We find inspiration in tackling hard problems that no one else is solving; it’s what motivates everyone on the team to show up each day and do their best work. This ethos isn’t just a corporate value, it’s a virtue.”
Phoenix Labs’ strategy for establishing these teams starts with investing in strong leaders and core groups in each location, and empowering them to foster team growth organically. In Montreal, the team is led by André Roy, a games industry veteran with leadership roots at Ubisoft, and is supported by Marie-Andrée Lavoie, lead of talent and culture initiatives, and Guillaume Roy, the studio’s head of technology. In Los Angeles, a core group of game developers with decades of experience working together is being led by Product Director Omar Kendall, who previously led teams at Riot Games. Omar is joined by Phoenix Labs’ own Jing Wang, who serves as the Los Angeles studio’s General Manager.
Tomorrow, Phoenix Labs will launch the highly anticipated Dauntless Reforged content update. Reforged introduces new open-world gameplay systems and reimagines the progression and story of Dauntless. The online action RPG has seen incredible success, with a growing community of more than 25 million players. Dauntless continues to pioneer cross-platform experiences as one of a handful of games that allow for cross-play and cross-generational compatibility with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
With two brand new studios, multiple prototypes in the works, huge team growth and the biggest Dauntless expansion of the year, Phoenix Labs is thriving and the future couldn’t look brighter.
Source: Gamespress
Categories: Media, Press Releases, Consoles
Tags: dlc, switch
Games: Dauntless
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Home › Book › Michael Harlan Turkell Acid Trip: Travels in the World of Vinegar (Hardcover)
Acid Trip: Travels in the World of Vinegar (Hardcover)
Michael Harlan Turkell
Winner of the IACP Cookbook Award for Culinary Travel
In Acid Trip, Michael Harlan Turkell takes readers on a fascinating journey through the world of vinegar. An avid maker of vinegars at home, Turkell traveled throughout North America, France, Italy, Austria, and Japan to learn about vinegar-making practices in places where the art has evolved over centuries. This richly narrated cookbook includes recipes from leading chefs including Daniel Boulud, Barbara Lynch, Michael Anthony, April Bloomfield, Massimo Bottura, Sean Brock, and many others. Dishes range from simple to sophisticated and include Fried Eggs with a Spoonful of Vinegar, Sweet & Sour Peppers, Balsamic Barbecued Ribs, Poulet au Vinaigre, Tomato Tarragon Shrub, and even Vinegar Pie. Turkell also details methods for making your own vinegars with bases as varied as wine, rice, apple cider, and honey. Featuring lush color photographs by the author, Acid Trip is a captivating story of an obsession and an indispensable reference for any food lover who aspires to make and cook with the best ingredients.
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Privacy PolicyMilton Gulf Pines KOA2019-06-07T12:39:17-04:00
Effective date: June 7th, 2019
Milton/Gulf Pines KOA (“us”, “we”, or “our”) operates the https://gulfpinesrv.com website (hereinafter referred to as the “Service”).
We use your data to provide and improve the Service. By using the Service, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy. Unless otherwise defined in this Privacy Policy, the terms used in this Privacy Policy have the same meanings as in our Terms and Conditions, accessible from https://gulfpinesrv.com
Service is the https://gulfpinesrv.com website operated by Milton/Gulf Pines KOA
You can enable or disable location services when you use our Service at any time by way of your device settings.
Cookies are files with a small amount of data which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a website and stored on your device. Other tracking technologies are also used such as beacons, tags, and scripts to collect and track information and to improve and analyze our Service.
Milton/Gulf Pines KOA uses the collected data for various purposes:
If you are from the European Economic Area (EEA), Milton/Gulf Pines KOA’s legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described in this Privacy Policy depends on the Personal Data we collect and the specific context in which we collect it.
Milton/Gulf Pines KOA may process your Personal Data because:
Milton/Gulf Pines KOA will retain your Personal Data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. We will retain and use your Personal Data to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your data to comply with applicable laws), resolve disputes and enforce our legal agreements and policies.
Milton/Gulf Pines KOA will also retain Usage Data for internal analysis purposes. Usage Data is generally retained for a shorter period of time, except when this data is used to strengthen the security or to improve the functionality of our Service, or we are legally obligated to retain this data for longer periods.
If you are located outside the United States and choose to provide information to us, please note that we transfer the data, including Personal Data, to the United States and process it there.
Milton/Gulf Pines KOA will take all the steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and no transfer of your Personal Data will take place to an organization or a country unless there are adequate controls in place including the security of your data and other personal information.
If Milton/Gulf Pines KOA is involved in a merger, acquisition or asset sale, your Personal Data may be transferred. We will provide notice before your Personal Data is transferred and becomes subject to a different Privacy Policy.
Under certain circumstances, Milton/Gulf Pines KOA may be required to disclose your Personal Data if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities (e.g. a court or a government agency).
Milton/Gulf Pines KOA may disclose your Personal Data in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to:
To protect and defend the rights or property of Milton/Gulf Pines KOA
OUR POLICY ON “DO NOT TRACK” SIGNALS UNDER THE CALIFORNIA ONLINE PROTECTION ACT (CALOPPA)
If you are a resident of the European Economic Area (EEA), you have certain data protection rights. American RV Resort aims to take reasonable steps to allow you to correct, amend, delete or limit the use of your Personal Data.
If you wish to be informed about what Personal Data we hold about you and if you want it to be removed from our systems, please contact us.
The right to withdraw consent. You also have the right to withdraw your consent at any time where Milton/Gulf Pines KOA relied on your consent to process your personal information.
We may employ third party companies and individuals to facilitate our Service (“Service Providers”), provide the Service on our behalf, perform Service-related services or assist us in analyzing how our Service is used.
For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy Terms web page: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en
Milton/Gulf Pines KOA uses remarketing services to advertise on third party websites to you after you visited our Service. We and our third-party vendors use cookies to inform, optimize and serve ads based on your past visits to our Service.
Google Ads (AdWords) remarketing service is provided by Google Inc.
BING ADS REMARKETING
Bing Ads remarketing service is provided by Microsoft Inc.
You can opt-out of Bing Ads interest-based ads by following their instructions: https://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/policies/personalized-ads
You can learn more about the privacy practices and policies of Microsoft by visiting their Privacy Policy page: https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/PrivacyStatement
Twitter remarketing service is provided by Twitter Inc.
You can opt-out from Twitter’s interest-based ads by following their instructions: https://support.twitter.com/articles/20170405
You can learn more about the privacy practices and policies of Twitter by visiting their Privacy Policy page: https://twitter.com/privacy
To opt-out from Facebook’s interest-based ads, follow these instructions from Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/help/568137493302217
Facebook adheres to the Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioural Advertising established by the Digital Advertising Alliance. You can also opt-out from Facebook and other participating companies through the Digital Advertising Alliance in the USA http://www.aboutads.info/choices/, the Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada in Canada http://youradchoices.ca/ or the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance in Europe http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/, or opt-out using your mobile device settings.
AdRoll remarketing service is provided by Semantic Sugar, Inc.
You can opt-out of AdRoll remarketing by visiting this AdRoll Advertising Preferences web page: http://info.evidon.com/pub_info/573?v=1nt=1nw=false
For more information on the privacy practices of AdRoll, please visit the AdRoll Privacy Policy web page: http://www.adroll.com/about/privacy
By visiting this page on our website: https://gulfpinesrv.com/contact-us/
By phone number: (850) 623-0808
By mail: 8700 Gulf Pines Dr, Milton, FL 32583
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