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Lao Airlines
on ISSUU
ພາສາ:
laoairlines.com
posted by Yuki
Mar 14, 2018 1339 50 0
If you’re reading this on the aeroplane, there’s a fair chance you don’t often take the time these days to physically flip through pages made of paper. Like many people, you probably get your news and information from social media and other online sources.
It’s hard to imagine, then, how different things were just two decades ago. But when Thanousone Phonamat returned to Laos after completing a degree in Business Administration in Germany in 1996, he could see the future in his mind’s eye.
“In my studies, which included a minor in IT, I learned that the internet was something that was going to change the world,” he says.
“I could see how it would help poor countries to develop. But when I came back to Laos, there was no internet, and people were dialling into Thailand for email.”
We’re speaking in his spacious office in the headquarters of Planet Online, the company that first introduced Laos to the possibilities of cyberspace.
Today, Planet is just one in a crowded market of internet service providers, big and small, including the state-owned Lao Telecom. But back in 1996, Thanousone and his business partners had to work hard to convince the Lao Government that the future was online. He laughs at the memory now, but it was hard going.
“We tried to convince the government there are more positives than negatives for having internet in the country,” he says.
“We just had to find a way to prevent all the negative things. I think it took us about four years before we got a license as an Internet Service Provider.”
While they waited, he and his colleagues set up an IT company in 1998, Planet Computers, a service that was an agent for IBM and worked with several international organisations to provide computer services. Planet also opened a retail space in downtown Vientiane, and soon noticed a steady stream of inquiries about email.
“Tourists would come into the shop on Setthatirath Road, and ask for Hotmail, always Hotmail,” he says.
“We kept trying to explain that we only sold computers, but then realised that the city needed an internet café. We thought, why don’t we connect to Thai servers and let everyone use Hotmail?”
That was back in 1998, and the café – the country’s first – charged $2 a minute for customers to log into their online accounts. Incredibly, no one was put off by the price, and while many people would spend just a few minutes checking their mail before leaving, many others stayed for an hour or more.
“I don’t know what they were doing, but we ended up following the tourist route. We opened cafes in Vang Vieng, Luang Prabang and Luang Namtha,” he says.
The internet was well and truly established by then, and dozens of others had followed suit and opened their own internet cafes by the time Lao Telecom, Laos’ official telecommunications company, bit the bullet and launched itself as a service provider.
Planet missed out on being the country’s first official service provider, but Thanousone says the company prides itself on laying the groundwork, and the fact that it has remained independent throughout the years.
Planet finally received its ISP license in 2000, when internet technology was still in the dial-up phase, and signed a revenue-sharing agreement with local telecommunications company ETL the following year.
“Without working with operators, we would not be able to provide good internet access,” he says.
“We worked with ETL for two years, until they learned enough to set up their own internet service. So we decided to we needed to be independent, and that’s how we came to WiFi in 2004.”
Locals and long-time residents might remember the early days of WiFi at public places like Joma café – purchased in half-hour chunks at exorbitant prices alongside your coffee – but today, it’s impossible to imagine the world without constant connectivity. Thanousone says Planet focuses mainly on corporate customers, including most of the country’s banks, and, rather than being resentful of competition, he’s happy to have been one of the country’s internet pioneers. It was even the first country in the region to introduce the 4G network, an achievement that made headlines in neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam.
“Now that the internet is everywhere, in every part of life, we’re happy that we’ve achieved our goal,” he says.
“That’s why we’re looking at other sectors to develop.”
Planet now has projects in rural areas, where communities may be connected to the internet, but unable to afford the right devices to take advantage of the online world.
“Many kids don’t have computers – it’s pointless if you have coverage countrywide but people still have barriers to access,” he says.
Planet set up Alo! as a manufacturing company several years ago, producing affordable and transportable computers and tablets for students, in partnership with Microsoft and the Lao Ministry of Education.
It’s a special Lao thing, and Microsoft consider it good case study,” Thanousone says.
“Today, it’s not just about business profit, but seeing that we can help bring full-speed internet to the whole country and maximising the benefits of technology.”
Planet Internetແພລນເນັດ
[:en]Chiang Mai City of Creativity[:]
[:en]1626, How may we help you?[:la]ຟັງຜ່ານສາຍ ຮັບດ້ວຍໃຈ[:]
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/economy/inflationandpriceindices/articles/whatsinthebasketofgoods70yearsofshoppinghistory/2016-07-21
What's in the basket of goods? 70 years of shopping history
Explore how the basket of goods has changed over the decades and how the ONS calculates inflation.
For seven decades the Office for National Statistics has been using a notional 'Basket of Goods and Services' to help measure the rising and falling cost of products and services over time, known as consumer price inflation.
This 'shopping basket' contains hundreds of goods and services, with some items taken out of the basket and some brought in to make sure the measures are up to date and representative of consumer spending patterns.
Explore the history of the basket below. Some basket data is missing, so we have only been able to estimate when an item was excluded from the list.
Embed this interactive
How is the Basket of Goods compiled?
In principle, the basket of goods and services should contain all consumer goods and services purchased by households and the prices measured in every shop or outlet that supplies them.
In practice, a sample of prices for a selection of representative goods and services in a range of UK retail locations is used.
Currently, around 180,000 separate price quotations are used every month in compiling the measures, covering around 700 representative consumer goods and services. These prices are collected in around 140 locations across the UK and from the internet and over the phone at ONS.
Within each year , the consumer price indices represent the changing cost of a basket of goods and services of fixed composition, quantity and quality. In this way, changes in the consumer price indices from month to month reflect only changes in prices, and not ongoing variations in the quality and quantity of items purchased by consumers.
However, the contents of the consumer price inflation basket of goods and services and their associated expenditure weights are updated annually. Weights are applied to items to ensure that their influence on the overall measure reflects their importance in the typical household budget.
This annual updating is important in helping to avoid potential biases that might otherwise develop over time - for example, due to the development of entirely new goods and services, or the tendency for consumers to move away from buying goods and services which have risen relatively rapidly in price and to goods and services whose prices have fallen. For example, if the price of tea rose dramatically during one year, consumers might switch their spending towards coffee making it necessary to adjust the expenditure weights accordingly in the following year.
Longer-term trends
These procedures also help to ensure that the indices reflect longer-term trends in consumer spending patterns. For example, the proportion of household spending on services has broadly risen overall over the last 25 years. This is reflected both in an increasing weight for this component in the consumer price indices, and the addition of new items in the basket to improve measurement of price changes in this area.
Equally, the weights of education and communication in the CPI have risen since the start of the millennium as university fees have risen and increased use has been made of mobile phones and bundled communication services. Conversely the weights of food and tobacco have fallen.
There are four different measures of consumer price inflation - the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) which is produced to international standards, CPIH which is a measure of consumer price inflation that includes owner occupier housing costs, the Retail Prices Index (a long-standing measure of UK inflation that has been used for a wide range of purposes), and an improved variant of RPI, called RPIJ, which unlike the RPI uses formulae that meet international standards.
There are 12 divisions of CPI in the 2016 basket: food & non-alcoholic beverages, alcohol & tobacco, clothing & footwear, housing & household services, furniture & household goods, health, transport, communication, recreation & culture, education, restaurants & hotels and miscellaneous goods & services. These are broken down further into 85 classes, for example, bread and cereals, electricity, new cars and cultural services.
More technical information about how the Basket of Goods is compiled is available from the ONS website.
Other Visual.ONS articles:
Shopping in shops that have no 'shops'
How do childhood circumstances affect your chances of poverty as an adult?
Deaths from 'legal highs'
For more information, please contact: cpi@ons.gov.uk
The Basket of Goods and Services 2016
Historical basket of goods
digitalcontent@ons.gov.uk
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Des Hague | Books and News
Des Hague References
Des Hague is an acclaimed executive leader and an inspirational speaker who believes in continuous learning and mental evolution, “…there is no better way to gaining those insights than through acquiring knowledge. Reading is essential.” An avid reader, Des has an insatiable hunger for non-fiction. From the thousands (literally!) of books he has read throughout his life, he has gained insight on several different points of view. Such commitment to learning and reading has led him to become a prominent forward-thinking executive.
Des’ appetite for knowledge drove his first business career at the age of 15 when he managed a small restaurant in England. From there, his passion for excellence launched his career within the industry and strengthened his role as a thoughtful, business-savvy leader. Obtaining an MBA with a focus in International Business from American College in London, Des added to his well-read expertise to help him lead in a more analytical nature. Learning from others is also invaluable. Have the confidence and let others help and possess a never stop learning mindset.
Read Des’ blog for the latest business and leadership book reviews or insightful quotes that are meant to make you think or become inspired!
Des has impressed many with his professionalism, below are some testaments to his expertise:
“Des is known to be dedicated to his craft. He is an innovative, forward thinker with great experience and character. He was instrumental in positioning Centerplate to be at the forefront of culinary excellence in stadiums and areas across the country. In doing so, he has gained the respect of many he has worked with in this industry.”- Jim Mercurio, VP of Stadium Operations at Levi’s Stadium
“For a man who leads a company with over 45,000+ team members, Des’ ability to personally touch each and everyone one of us, directly or indirectly, is an innate characteristic that we all try and duplicate. That said I can speak for many of us who find it hard to live up to the high morale, ethical and professional standards that Des has set for us.” – Ashton D. Sequeira, Regional Vice President at Centerplate
“Mr.Hague, in fact, was lauded by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake when she honored Centerplate earlier this year with the Mayor’s Business Recognition Award. The award recognizes businesses that have demonstrated corporate leadership and service in improving the quality of life in Baltimore.” – Mark S. Furst, President and CEO at United Way of Central Maryland
“In recognition of his outstanding work and commitment to our industry and community, our Corporation awarded Centerplate with our highest honor, the “Flame of Friendship” in 2013. Centerplate remains the only organization that has received this honor and it is a true reflection of Mr. Hague’s leadership and partnership with our Corporation.” – Carol Wallace, President and CEO at the San Diego Convention Center Corporation
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Focus on Preventing Driving Deaths During Deadliest Period
May 30, 2018 / CTByTheNumbers.info
The period between Memorial Day and Labor Day is the time when motorists are more likely to be injured or killed in fatal crashes involving a teen driver. It is described as the “100 deadliest days,” by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. More than 1,000 people were killed in crashes involving teen drivers in 2016, according to the organization, a 14 percent increase compared to the rest of the year and a figure that equates to 10 people per day.
The two AAA Clubs in Connecticut -- AAA Northeast and AAA Greater Hartford -- gathered with Federal and State traffic safety advocates in Hartford to draw attention to the data in the hopes of reducing the numbers in the coming three month period.
"The number of fatal crashes involving teen drivers during the summer is an important traffic safety concern for AAA," says Fran Mayko, AAA Northeast spokeswoman. “Research shows young drivers are at greater risk during this time, and have higher crash rates compared to older, more experienced drivers because of two factors: speeding and nighttime driving."
Over the last five years in Connecticut, there have been 44 fatal crashes involving teen drivers, including 12 last summer during the 100 "Deadliest Days" period. At least half of the crashes occurred after 9 pm, according to data obtained through UConn's CT Crash Data Repository, officials pointed out.
Although none of the victims in those 12 crashes was a teen driver, the driver's passengers or someone in another vehicle were either injured or killed. "Statistics shows these crashes affect everyone on the road, not just teen drivers or their parents," says Mayko. "Education, coupled with proper driver training and parental involvement, will help teen drivers become better, safer drivers on our roadways."
Based on 2016 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data, the AAA Foundation research highlighted the following:
36% of all motor teen driver vehicle fatalities occurred between 9:00 pm and 5:00 am;
There was a 22% increase in the average number of nighttime crashes per day involving teen drivers between May and September compared to the rest of the year;
29% of all motor vehicle deaths involving a teen driver were speed-related;
1 in 10 nighttime crash fatalities and 1 in 10 speed-related fatalities involved a teen driver.
Overall, Connecticut traffic deaths have been inching up for most of the past few years on average, mirroring a national trend. Traffic deaths were down in 2017 to 284, according to the UConn Crash Data Depository, after reaching an historic high of 311 in 2016, after a steady increase in the previous few years (278 in 2015, 248 recorded in 2014). Nationally, traffic fatalities are the highest they’ve been since 2008.
AAA urges parents to discuss the higher risks teens face during the summer and to familiarize themselves with Connecticut's Graduated Drivers Licensing (GDL) laws and become actively involved in the learn-to-drive process involving their inexperienced teen. To prepare for the summer drive season, AAA also encourages parents to:
Discuss early and often the dangers of risky driving situations with their teens;
Teach by example and minimize their own risky behavior when behind the wheel;
Make and enforce a parent-teen driving agreement that sets driving limits based on the state’s GDL.
Visit TeenDriving.AAA.com that offers tools such as interactive widgets, highlighting teen driving risks and state licensing information. An online AAA StartSmart program also offers parental resources on how to become effective in-car coaches and ways to manage their teen’s overall driving privileges.
The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety is a not-for-profit, publicly funded research and educational organization, whose mission is to prevent traffic deaths and injuries by conducting research into their causes. It also educates the public about strategies to prevent crashes and reduce injuries when they do occur.
https://youtu.be/QmCJKvyXhEQ
May 30, 2018 / CTByTheNumbers.info/
Community, Education, Public Safety, Transportation, Children
Exhibit at Wadsworth Atheneum Shows ...
After 100 Year Absence, National ...
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Listen to the Revolution: free ebook on 1917, art and culture
‘With all your body, all your heart and all your mind, listen to the Revolution.’ said the poet Alexander Blok in 1918.
As the centenary year of the Russian Revolution ends and we move into 2018, we have published Listen to the Revolution - The Impact of the Russian Revolution on Art and Culture.
It is widely recognised that the Revolution stimulated a creative and imaginative explosion across all the arts and cultural activities, not only in Russia itself but across the world. It reverberated throughout the twentieth century, and echoes of this cultural revolution still resonate today. The booklet brings together the series of articles published on the Culture Matters web platform in the course of 2017, to mark the impact of the Revolution on art and culture.
We hope you enjoy reading the articles, which look at the momentous, worldwide influence of the Revolution on cinema, theatre, art, sport, science and other topics. And we hope you are inspired to join the modern-day struggle for cultural policies and cultural activities which aim to revolutionise elitist, expensive and inaccessible art and culture and replace it with art and culture which everyone can enjoy - culture for the many, not the few.
Listen to the Revolution – culture matters!
Listen to the Revolution - The Impact of the Russian Revolution on Art and Culture is a free ebook, available from here. If you would like to place a bulk order for a print version of the ebook please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Published in 1917 Centenary
Published in Cultural Commentary
Published in Education
Megan Behrent considers what we can learn from the great strides made in education in revolutionary Russia.
"All Russia was learning to read, and reading - politics, economics, history - because the people wanted to know. . . . In every city, in most towns, along the Front, each political faction had its newspaper - sometimes several. Hundreds of thousands of pamphlets were distributed by thousands of organisations, and poured into the armies, the villages, the factories, the streets. The thirst for education, so long thwarted, burst with the Revolution into a frenzy of expression. From Smolny Institute alone, the first six months, went out every day tons, car-loads, train-loads of literature, saturating the land. Russia absorbed reading matter like hot sand drinks water, insatiable. And it was not fables, falsified history, diluted religion, and the cheap fiction that corrupts—but social and economic theories, philosophy, the works of Tolstoy, Gogol, and Gorky." John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World
There is no greater school than a revolution. It is therefore not surprising that some of the most innovative, radical, and successful literacy campaigns are those that are born out of revolutions - when, on a mass scale, people fight for a better society. In revolutionary periods, ideas matter as never before, and literacy needs no motivation as it becomes a truly liberatory endeavor. Thus, from the trenches of the US Civil War and the Russian front to the battle lines of El Salvador, there are innumerable stories of soldiers teaching each other to read newspapers in the midst of war and famine. One of the most inspiring examples of the revolutionary transformation of literacy and education is the Russian Revolution of 1917.
The Russian Revolution was a watershed historical moment. That workers and peasants were able to overthrow tsarism and create a new society based on workers’ power was an inspiration to millions of oppressed and exploited people around the world. At the time of the revolution, the vast majority of Russians were peasants toiling under the yoke of big landowners and eking out a meager existence. More than 60 percent of the population was illiterate. At the same time, however, Russia was home to some of the largest and most advanced factories in the world, with a highly concentrated working class. By October 1917, the Bolshevik Party had won the support of the majority of workers and established political rule based on a system of soviets, or councils, of workers, peasants, and soldiers.
The revolution itself, occurring in two major stages in February and October, took place in conditions of extreme scarcity. In addition to the long-standing privation of Russia’s peasants, the First World War caused further food shortages and disease. No sooner had the revolution succeeded than the young Soviet government was forced to fight on two military fronts: a civil war against the old powers just overthrown, and a battle against some dozen countries that sent their troops to defeat the revolution. As the Bolsheviks had long argued, the longevity and success of the Russian revolution depended in large part on the spread of revolution to advanced capitalist countries, in particular to Germany. Despite five years of revolutionary upheaval in Germany, the revolution there failed. The young revolutionary society was thus left isolated and under attack.
Despite these conditions, however, the Russian Revolution led not only to a radical transformation of school itself but also of the way people conceived of learning and the relationship between cognition and language. Indeed, the early years of the Russian Revolution offer stunning examples of what education looked like in a society in which working-class people democratically made decisions and organized society in their own interest. In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, education was massively overhauled with a tenfold increase in the expenditure on popular education. Free and universal access to education was mandated for all children from the ages of three to sixteen years old, and the number of schools at least doubled within the first two years of the revolution. Coeducation was immediately implemented as a means of combating sex discrimination, and for the first time schools were created for students with learning and other disabilities.
Developing mass literacy was seen as crucial to the success of the revolution. Lenin argued: “As long as there is such a thing in the country as illiteracy it is hard to talk about political education.” As a result, and despite the grim conditions, literacy campaigns were launched nationally among toddlers, soldiers, adolescents, workers, and peasants. The same was true of universal education. The Bolsheviks understood that the guarantee of free, public education was essential both to the education of a new generation of workers who would be prepared to run society in their own interests and as a means of freeing women from the drudgery of housework. Thus, there were attempts to provide universal crèches and preschools.
What the October Revolution gave to the female worker and peasant, 1920 Soviet propaganda poster. (The inscriptions on the buildings read "library", "kindergarten", "school for grown-ups", etc.)
None of these initiatives was easy to accomplish given the economic conditions surrounding the young revolution. Victor Serge, a journalist and anarchist who later joined the Russian Communist Party, describes the staggering odds facing educators and miserable conditions that existed in the wake of the civil war: “Hungry children in rags would gather in winter-time around a small stove planted in the middle of the classroom, whose furniture often went for fuel to give some tiny relief from the freezing cold; they had one pencil between four of them and their schoolmistress was hungry.” One historian describes the level of scarcity: “In 1920 Narkompros [the People’s Commissariat for Education] received the following six-month allotment: one pencil per sixty pupils; one pen per twenty-two pupils; one notebook for every two pupils…. One village found a supply of wrappers for caramel candies and expropriated them for writing paper for the local school.” (Ben Eklof, Russian Literacy Campaigns,1861–1939 in Robert F. Arnove and Harvey J. Graff, eds., National Literacy Campaigns and Movements: Historical and Comparative Perspectives)The situation was so dire that “in 1921, the literacy Cheka prepared a brochure for short-term literacy courses including a chapter entitled ‘How to get by without paper, pencils, or pens." Nonetheless, as Serge explains, “in spite of this grotesque misery, a prodigious impulse was given to public education. Such a thirst for knowledge sprang up all over the country that new schools, adult courses, universities and Workers’ Faculties were formed everywhere.” (Victor Serge, Year One)
Historian Lisa Kirschenbaum describes the incredible gap between the conditions imposed by famine and what kindergartens were able to accomplish. On the one hand, these schools had to provide food each day for students and teachers in the midst of a famine simply to prevent starvation. And yet, as Kirschenbaum writes, “even with these constraints, local administrations managed to set up some institutions. In 1918, Moscow guberniia [province] led the way with twenty-three kindergartens, eight day cares (ochagi) and thirteen summer playgrounds. A year later it boasted a total of 279 institutions…. Petrograd had no preschool department in 1918, but a year later it reported 106 institutions in the city and 180 in the guberniia outside the city. Other areas reported slower, but still remarkable, increases.” (Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932)
Within these preschools, teachers experimented with radical pedagogy, particularly the notion of “free upbringing,” as “teachers insisted that freedom in the classroom was part and parcel of the Revolution’s transformation of social life.” Kirschenbaum elaborates: “By allowing, as one teacher expressed it, the ‘free development of [children’s] inherent capabilities and developing independence, creative initiative, and social feeling,’ svobodnoe vospitanie [free upbringing] played a ‘very important role in the construction of a new life.’”
A central aspect of expanding literacy in revolutionary Russia was deciding in which language, or languages, literacy should be developed. Before the revolution, tsarist colonialism had forged a multinational empire in which ethnic Russians comprised only 43 percent of the population. A central political question for the Bolsheviks—the majority of whom were Russian - was how to combat the legacy of Russian chauvinism while also winning non-Russian nationalities to the project of the revolution. A full discussion of this history is beyond the scope of this chapter. But it is important to underscore how progressive Bolshevik politics were with respect to native language education.
Already in October 1918, the general policy was established to provide for native language education in any school where twenty-five or more pupils in each age group spoke the same language. Implementing the policy depended on a number of factors. For example, within Russia proper, where some national minorities such as Ukrainians and Byelorussians were already assimilated, few native-language programs were set up. Within Ukraine itself, however, the extent of native-language education was reflected in the rapid demand for Ukrainian language teachers and Ukrainian-language textbooks in the years following the revolution.
Nativizing language and literacy education for populations in the Caucasus and Central Asian regions of the old empire was a more complicated task. In part, the difficulty stemmed from efforts under tsarism to use differences in dialect to divide native peoples in these regions. In addition, in some cases the languages most widely spoken had not yet developed a writing system. Thus, part of nativizing education meant deciding which language should be used in school, and which system (for example, Cyrillic, Roman, or Arabic script, or something different altogether) should be used to write it. Despite these practical challenges, native language education became the rule rather than the exception. Again, a key indication is the number of languages in which textbooks were published, which grew from twenty-five in 1924 to thirty-four in 1925 to forty-four in 1927. As British socialist Dave Crouch summarizes: “By 1927 native language education for national minorities outside their own republic or region was widespread, while in their own republic it was almost total.” (Dave Crouch, “The Seeds of National Liberation”, International Socialism Journal 94)
At the same time universities were opened up to workers as preliminary exams were abolished to allow them to attend lectures. The lectures themselves were free, art was made public, and the number of libraries was dramatically increased. There was an incredible hunger for learning in a society in which people were making democratic decisions about their lives and their society. One writer describes: “One course, for example, is attended by a thousand men in spite of the appalling cold of the lecture rooms. The hands of the science professors . . . are frostbitten from touching the icy metal of their instruments during demonstrations.”
A whole new educational system was created in which traditional education was thrown out and new, innovative techniques were implemented that emphasized self-activity, collectivism, and choice, and that drew on students’ prior experience, knowledge, and interaction with the real world. Anna-Louise Strong, an American journalist who traveled extensively in Russia after the revolution, wrote about her experiences and recounts a conversation with one teacher:
“We call it the Work School,” said a teacher to me. “We base all study on the child’s play and his relation to productive work. We begin with the life around him. How do the people in the village get their living? What do they produce? What tools do they use to produce it? Do they eat it all or exchange some of it? For what do they exchange it? What are horses and their use to man? What are pigs and what makes them fat? What are families and how do they support each other, and what is a village that organizes and cares for the families?”
“This is interesting nature study and sociology,” I replied, “but how do you teach mathematics?” He looked at me in surprise.
“By real problems about real situations,” he answered. “Can we use a textbook in which a lord has ten thousand rubles and puts five thousand out at interest and the children are asked what his profit is? The old mathematics is full of problems the children never see now, of situations and money values which no longer exist, of transactions which we do not wish to encourage. Also it was always purely formal, divorced from existence.
We have simple problems in addition, to find out how many cows there are in the village, by adding the number in each family. Simple problems of division of food, to know how much the village can export. Problems of proportion,—if our village has three hundred families and the next has one thousand, how many red soldiers must each give to the army, how many delegates is each entitled to in the township soviet? The older children work out the food-tax for their families; that really begins to interest the parents in our schools.” (Anna-Louise Strong, The First Time in History)
Within schools, student governments were set up - even at the elementary school level - in which elected student representatives worked with teachers and other school workers to run the schools. In so doing, schools became places where students learned “collective action” and began to put the principles of the revolution in practice. As Strong described: “We have our self-governed school community, in which teachers, children and janitors all have equal voice. It decides everything, what shall be done with the school funds, what shall be planted in the school garden, what shall be taught. If the children decide against some necessary subject, it is the teacher’s job to show them through their play and life together that the subject is needed.”
She continues by describing a school for orphans and homeless children where basic needs such as food, clothing, and hygiene had to be met before any real learning could begin. Additionally, the students spoke more than a dozen different dialects, making the shared development of a common language one of the school’s first goals. But, as the writer describes, “those were famine conditions. Yet the children in this school, just learning to speak to each other, had their School Council for self-government which received a gift of chocolate I sent them, duly electing a representative to come and get it and furnishing her with proper papers of authorization. They divided the chocolate fairly.”
A more skeptical writer, William Chamberlin, a journalist with the Christian Science Monitor who passed on information to US intelligence, described a school in which students in the higher grades “receive tasks in each subject, requiring from a week to a month for completion. They are then left free to carry out these tasks as they see fit.” (William Henry Chamberlin, “The Revolution in Education and Culture” in Soviet Russia: A Living Record and a History). He continued:
"Visiting a school where this system was in operation I found the pupils at work in various classrooms, studying and writing out their problems in composition, algebra, and elemental chemistry. Sometimes the teacher was in the room, sometimes not, but the students were left almost entirely to their own resources. The teacher seemed to function largely in an advisory capacity, giving help only when asked. If the students preferred talk or games to study, the teacher usually overlooked it. Each student was free to choose the subject or subjects on which he would work on any particular day.
This absence of external restriction is a very marked characteristic of the Soviet school. The maintenance of discipline is in the hands of organizations elected by the students themselves, and while one seldom witnesses actual rowdyism in the classroom, one is also unlikely to find the strict order that usually prevails in the schools of other countries."
Chamberlin questioned Lunacharsky, the commissar for education, about whether such a model provided sufficient education in basic skills such as grammar and spelling. Lunacharsky replied: “Frankly, we don’t attach so much importance to the formal school discipline of reading and writing and spelling as to the development of the child’s mind and personality. Once a pupil begins to think for himself he will master such tools of formal knowledge as he may need. And if he doesn’t learn to think for himself no amount of correctly added sums or correctly spelled words will do him much good.” But, Chamberlin explained, it was hard to provide hard data on the success of the program, as “marks are proverbially an unreliable gauge of students’ ability; and Russia has no grading system.” Examinations were also largely abolished, including those that had previously been necessary to gain entrance into institutions of higher education. Why? Because “it was believed that no one would willingly listen to lectures that were of no use to him.”
Anatoly Lunacharsky
The revolution inspired a wide range of innovative thinkers in education and psychology. Lev Vygotsky, known as the “Mozart of psychology,” created a legacy of influential work in child and adolescent psychology and cognition, despite being stymied and all but silenced under Stalinism. He began with a Marxist method and analyzed the way in which social relations are at the heart of children’s learning process. He wrote that he intended to develop a new scientific psychology not by quoting Marxist texts but rather “having learned the whole of Marx’s method” and applying it to the study of consciousness and culture, using psychology as his tool of investigation.
Vygotsky used this method to investigate the creation of “higher mental processes,” as opposed to more “natural” mental functions, which are biologically endowed. These higher mental processes are mediated by human-made psychological tools (for example, language), and include voluntary attention, active perception, and intentional memory. He also traced the dialectical development and interaction of thought and language, which results in the internalization of language, verbalized thought, and conceptual thinking. He argued that mental development is a sociohistorical process both for the human species and for individuals as they develop, becoming “humanized” from birth. Personality begins forming at birth in a dialectical manner, with the child an active agent in appropriating elements from her environment (not always consciously) in line with her internal psychological structure and unique individual social activity. For Vygotsky, education plays a decisive role in “not only the development of the individual’s potential, but in the expression and growth of the human culture from which man springs,” and which is transmitted to succeeding generations.
Through applied research in interdisciplinary educational psychology, Vygotsky developed concepts such as the zone of proximal development, in which joint social activity and instruction “marches ahead of development and leads it; it must be aimed not so much at the ripe as the ripening functions.” (L. S. Vygotsky, Thought and Language) This view clashed with Piaget’s insistence on the necessity of passively waiting for a level of biological and developmental maturity prior to instruction. Vygotsky devoted himself to the education of mentally and physically handicapped children; he founded and directed the Institute for the Study of Handicapped Children, which focused on the social development of higher mental processes among children with disabilities. He also discovered characteristics of “preconceptual” forms of thinking associated with schizophrenia and other psychopathologies.
Vygotsky saw as the historical task of his time the creation of an integrated scientific psychology on a dialectical, material, historical foundation that would help the practical transformation of society. As he argued, “it is practice which poses the tasks and is the supreme judge of theory.” Although this task was incomplete upon his death, and both his work and the revolution itself were derailed by Stalinism (his work was banned under Stalin for twenty years after his death), he made great headway in this process, and laid a foundation for others who have been inspired to further elaborate upon and develop his ideas.
The immense poverty and scarcity of material resources after the Russian Revolution and the subsequent Stalinist counterrevolution distorted the revolutionary promise of education reform in the early years. Nonetheless, the Russian Revolution provides important examples of the possibilities for the creativity and radical reform that could be unleashed by revolutionary transformation of society at large - even amid the worst conditions.
While the adult literacy campaign’s accomplishments were thus limited, and much of the data is hotly contested as a result of Stalinist distortions, it had important successes. In its first year of existence, the campaign reached five million people, “about half of whom learned to read and write.” While literacy statistics are hard to find, it is worth noting that the number of rural mailboxes increased from 2,800 in 1913 to 64,000 in 1926 as newspaper subscriptions and the exchange of written communications substantially increased—a notable corollary of increased literacy. In unions, literacy programs were quite successful. To give one example, a campaign among railway workers led to a 99 percent literacy rate by 1924. Similarly, in the Red Army, where literacy and education were deemed crucial to ensure that soldiers were politically engaged with its project, illiteracy rates decreased from 50 percent to only 14 percent three years later, and 8 percent one year after that. On its seventh anniversary, the army achieved a 100 percent literacy rate, an immense accomplishment, even if short-lived, as new conscripts made continual education necessary.
Perhaps more important than any of the data, however, are the plethora of stories of innovation and radically restructured ideas of schooling, teaching, and learning as students at all levels took control of their own learning, imbued with a thirst for knowledge in a world which was theirs to create and run in their own interests.
The complete transformation of education and literacy during the Russian Revolution exposes the lies at the heart of American education - that competition drives innovation, that punishments and rewards are the only motivations for learning, and that schools are the great levelers that provide every child with an equal opportunity to succeed.
If we have anything to learn from the revolutionary literacy campaigns of Russia, it is that genuine learning triumphs in revolutionary situations that provide people with real opportunities for collective and cooperative inquiry and research; that literacy is always political; and that radical pedagogy is most successful when it actively engages people in the transformation of their own worlds - not simply in the world of ideas, but by transforming the material conditions in which reading, writing, and learning take place. Compare that to rote memorization of disconnected bits of information, bubble tests, and scripted, skill-based curricula that suck the love of learning out of children in our schools.
Radical educators should draw on these lessons wherever possible to fight for an educational system that is liberatory rather than stultifying, sees students as thinkers and actors rather than empty containers to be filled, and recognizes that collaboration and collective action are far more useful for our students than individualism and meritocracy.
But for most teachers, the opportunities to implement the lessons of these struggles are extremely limited as curricula are standardized and stripped of any political meaning, testing triumphs over critical thinking, and our jobs are increasingly contingent on how much “value” we’ve added to a test score.
It is no coincidence that the best examples of radical pedagogy come from revolutionary periods of struggle, as newly radicalized students and teachers put forward new visions of education and reshape pedagogy. As teachers, we know that students can’t just ignore the many inequalities they face outside of the school building and overcome these through acts of sheer will. Genuine literacy that emphasizes critical thinking, political consciousness, and self-emancipation cannot happen in a vacuum. The creation of a liberatory pedagogy and literacy goes hand in hand with the self-emancipation of working people through revolutionary transformations of society as a whole.
Under capitalism, education will always be a means of maintaining class divisions rather than eradicating them. To imagine an educational system that is truly liberatory, we need to talk about fighting for a different kind of society - a socialist society in which, as Marx described, “the free development of each is the precondition for the free development of all.” It is only by transforming our society to eradicate poverty, prisons, oppression, and exploitation in all its forms that we can fully unleash human potential and creativity.
Imagine a society in which teachers and students democratically decided what learning should look like and where learning was freed from the confines of a classroom. Imagine what true lifelong learning could look like in a world in which we were free to develop our own courses of study and unlock the creative potential of humanity. If we can learn anything from the history of education and literacy, it is that such a revolutionary transformation of society is both possible and urgently needed.
This article first appeared in Issue #82 of International Socialist Review (ISR Issue #82) and is an excerpt from the chapter “Literacy and Revolution” in the new Haymarket book, Education and Capitalism.
Gareth Edwards considers the changing attitudes to sport that resulted from the Russian Revolution.
In 1917 the Russian Revolution turned the world upside down, inspiring millions of people with its vision of a society built on solidarity and the fulfilment of human need. In the process it unleashed an explosion of creativity in art, music, poetry and literature. It touched every area of people’s lives, including the games they played. Sport, however, was far from being a priority. The Bolsheviks, who had led the revolution, were confronted with civil war, invading armies, widespread famine and a typhus epidemic. Survival, not leisure, was the order of the day.
It would be easy to characterise the Bolsheviks as being anti-sports. Leading members of the party, such as Leon Trotsky and Anotoli Lunacharsky, were close to those most critical of sport during the physical culture debates that took place in the early 1920s. In addition, the party’s attitude to the Olympics is normally given as evidence to support this anti-sport claim. The Bolsheviks boycotted the Games on the grounds they would “deflect workers from the class struggle and train them for imperialist wars”. Yet in reality the Bolshevik’s attitudes towards sport were somewhat more complicated.
In the aftermath of the revolution, sport would, unsurprisingly, play a political role for the Bolsheviks. Facing internal and external threats which would decimate the working class, they saw sport as a means by which the health and fitness of the population could be improved. As early as 1918 they issued a decree, On Compulsory Instruction in the Military Art, introducing physical training to the education system.
The position of women in society had already been greatly improved through the legalisation of abortion and divorce, but sport could also play a role by increasingly bringing women into public life. “It is our urgent task to draw women into sport,” said Lenin. “If we can achieve that and get them to make full use of the sun, water and fresh air for fortifying themselves, we shall bring an entire revolution in the Russian way of life.”
Youth – to the stadiums! Golovanov, 1947
And sport became another way of conveying the ideals of the revolution to the working classes of Europe. The worker-sport movement stretched across the continent and millions of workers were members of sports clubs run mainly by reformist organisations. The Red Sports International (RSI) was formed in 1921 with the express intention of connecting with these workers. Through the following decade the RSI (and the reformist Socialist Worker Sports International) held a number of Spartakiads and Worker Olympics in opposition to the official Olympic Games.
Just as important was that participation in the new physical culture could be a life-affirming activity, allowing people to experience the freedom and movement of their own bodies. Lenin was convinced that recreation and exercise were integral parts of a well-rounded life. “Young people especially need to have a zest for life and be in good spirits. Healthy sport – gymnastics, swimming, hiking all manner of physical exercise – should be combined as much as possible with a variety of intellectual interests, study, analysis and investigation… Healthy bodies, healthy minds!”
But the Bolsheviks were never overly prescriptive in their analysis of what physical culture should look like. It was not for the party to decide what constituted the best system of sports or produce the correct line for the working class to follow. Rather it was for the mass of people to discuss and debate, experiment and innovate, and in that process, create their own sports and games. Nobody could foresee exactly what the play of a future socialist society would be like, but equally no one could doubt that the need to play would assert itself. As Trotsky said, “The longing for amusement, distraction, sight-seeing and laughter is the most legitimate of human nature.”
Sports Games of the Soviet peoples, Vlasov, 1928
The Bolsheviks approach was just one strand in the wider physical culture debate, which also included the hygienists and the Proletkultists. The hygienists, as the name implies, were a collection of doctors and health care professionals whose attitudes were informed by their medical knowledge. Generally speaking, they were critical of sport, concerned that its emphasis on competition placed participants at risk of injury. They were equally disdainful of the West’s preoccupation with running faster, throwing further or jumping higher than ever before. “It is completely unnecessary and unimportant,” said A.A. Zikmund, head of the Physical Culture Institute in Moscow, “that anyone set a new world or Russian record.” Instead the hygienists advocated non-competitive physical pursuits - like gymnastics and swimming -as ways for people to stay healthy and relax.
For a time, the hygienists influenced Soviet policy on questions of physical culture. It was on their advice that certain sports were prohibited, and football, boxing and weight-lifting were all omitted from the programme of events at the First Trade Union Games in 1925. However, the hygienists were far from unanimous in their condemnation of sport. V.V. Gorinevsky, for example, was an advocate of playing tennis, which he saw as being an ideal physical exercise. Nikolai Semashko, a doctor and the People’s Commissar for Health, went much further arguing that sport was “the open gate to physical culture” which “develops the sort of will-power, strength and skill that should distinguish Soviet people.”
In contrast to the hygienists the Proletkult movement was unequivocal in its rejection of ‘bourgeois’ sport. Indeed, they denounced anything that smacked of the old society, be it in art, literature or music. They saw the ideology of capitalism woven into the fabric of sport. Its competitiveness set workers against each other, dividing people by tribal and national identities, while the physicality of the games put unnatural strains on the bodies of the players.
In place of sport Proletkultists argued for new, proletarian forms of play, founded on the principles of mass participation and cooperation. Often these new games were huge theatrical displays looking more like carnivals or parades than the sports we see today. Contests were shunned on the basis that they were ideologically incompatible with the new socialist society. Participation replaced spectating, and each event contained a distinct political message, as is apparent from some of their names: Rescue from the Imperialists; Smuggling Revolutionary Literature Across the Frontier; and Helping the Proletarians.
The hopes of the revolution died, alongside thousands of old Bolsheviks, with the rise of Josef Stalin. The collectivist ideals of 1917 were buried, replaced by exploitation and brutal repression. Internationalism was jettisoned in favour of “socialism in one country”. As the values and imperatives of the society changed so too did the character of the country’s physical culture. By 1925 the Bolsheviks had already turned towards a more elitist model of sport. Around this time Stalin is reported to have said: “We compete with the bourgeoisie economically, politically, and not without success. We compete everywhere possible. Why not compete in sport?” Team sports reappeared, complete with capitalist style league and cup structures. Successful sportspeople were held up as heroes in the Soviet Union and the quest for records resumed. Many of the hygienists and Proletkultists who had dared to dream of new forms of physical culture perished in the purges.
Eventually sport became a proxy for the Cold War. In 1952 the Soviet Union was re-integrated into the Olympic movement, ensuring that the relative strength of East and West was measured at each Games in gold, silver and bronze. As the country was inexorably compelled into economic, political and military competition on the international stage, so it also found itself drawn into sporting competition with the West.
Just as it would be a mistake to judge the ideals of the Russian Revolution by the horrors of Stalinism, so we should not allow the latter days of Soviet sport to obscure those remarkable early experiments in physical culture. Today, sport is a plaything of oil sheiks and states, corporations and oligarchs. Corruption, controversy and doping are all rife. Sports fans are increasingly priced out of the games they love to watch and play; workers building the stadiums for global mega-events are, tragically, paying a much higher price. The need for a critique of the contemporary sports world is, if anything, even more urgent than it was 100 years ago.
Published in Sport
Jean Turner looks at the dramatic changes that took place in architecture following the Bolshevik Revolution, and the profound influence this had on the development of the world's first workers' state.
In the nineteenth century, as in all the other arts, Russians were examining new forms of expression in architecture, following a backlash against Peter the Great’s import of classical architecture to Russia and the rejection of Catherine the Great’s Age of Enlightenment. Designers returned to interpreting traditional Russian forms of building and decoration.
This took place in a fervour of intellectual debate on the correct principles of building. In her book Russian Avant-Garde Catherine Cooke describes the different centres of architectural theory: “[…] the Architecture School of the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg was a bastion of Classicism but it had two more radical rivals, the architecture department of the St Petersburg Building College and the Royal College in Moscow. In the 1850s and ‘60s it was teachers in these two schools, Apollinari Krasovsky in Petersburg and Mikhail Bykovsky in Moscow, who laid the foundations in Russia for a Rationalist view of architecture rooted in new technologies and social tasks.”
After the assassination of Alexander III by People’s Will (Narodnaya Volya), an authoritarian social order was imposed. However, a new class of industrialist and banking dynasties had arisen from among the freed serfs with strong nationalist and cultural prejudices based on peasant and mercantile values. Their chosen form of design emerged as Moderne, or Art Nouveau, personified by the work of Fyodor Shekhtel.
As in other countries at this time, women were demanding entry to universities to receive architecture training. Since all the colleges were involved in radical unrest against tsarist authoritarianism, it was feared that women, often being supporters of radical workers’ demands, would bring trouble to the universities.
Among five women at the Congress of Russian Architects in 1911, two - Elena Bagaeva and Luisi Molas - ran their own architectural school, using the Academy curriculum and professors from the College of Civil Engineering. In 1902 women’s construction classes were pioneered in Moscow by Ivan Fomin, William Walcot and others, and held at Shekhtel’s office premises. By 1917 women had their own polytechnics in Moscow and Petersburg with full five-year courses in architecture, structural engineering, chemistry and electro-mechanics, and had by decree achieved “the right to erect buildings”. However, the decree was only implemented, along with many other practical and educational freedoms, after the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917.
The first two decrees of the new Bolshevik Government were the Decree on Peace, which took Russia out of World War I, and the Decree on Land, which nationalised all land and real estate, laying a new and unique foundation for Soviet architecture and planning.
Lenin handed Anatoly Lunacharsky control of the Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros). This shaped a policy of public education, including a planned appropriation of the heritage of the old world alongside the new forms that had emerged in the arts and architecture. This view was later challenged in 1920 by Alexander Bogdanov’s Proletkult which argued that the proletarians themselves would create new forms of culture ab initio.
In November 1917 the Bolshevik Party called a meeting at the Smolny Institute of Petrograd’s progressive younger painters, writers and designers to discuss their potential collaboration with Soviet power. With equal speed, the new Commissariat harnessed the support of the more establishment artists such as Boris Kustodiev, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and Alexander Benois, charging them with the preservation of art works in public buildings and with creating a preservation policy for historic buildings.
Ivan Leonidov, model for the Lenin Institute, Moscow, 1927
Rebels such as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Alexander Rodchenko and Lyubov Popova, originally on the fringe of the respectable world of academia, began teaching in art schools and research institutions. The Higher Art and Technical Workshops (VKhUTEMAS) in Moscow produced the artistic movements of Rationalism and Constructivism. The Rationalists focused on aesthetic rationality and form; the Constructivists on technical rationality and science. The Suprematists Ivan Leonidov and Iakov Chernikov favoured individual buildings of an abstract geometric quality on open sites. Classicism was not totally rejected but took new forms, for example in the work of Ivan and Igor Fomin, and Vladimir Shchuko and Vladimir Gelfreikh who designed the Lenin Library.
Much of their first work was theoretical because the five years of civil war and foreign intervention had destroyed the economy. Traditional building industry materials were virtually unobtainable. Models of proposed public buildings and monuments, for example Vladimir Tatlin’s 1919 Monument to the Third Communist International, were produced in the materials available but without any possibility of construction. According to John Milner, Tatlin’s Tower was intended to span the River Neva.
Rusakov Workers' Club, Konstantin Melnikov, 1927-28
During the civil war period, artists, actors and designers were at liberty to create propaganda productions for the new Soviet state. In the words of Alexei Gan, “the whole city would be the stage and the entire proletarian masses of Moscow the performers”. These productions became a focus of revolutionary design. Petrograd held an enormous festival for the first anniversary of the October Revolution that involved eighty-five separate design projects across the city by famous artists and designers, including Nathan Altman who decorated Palace Square with a temporary architectural sculpture.
No major reconstruction could begin until the problem of rapid production of building materials had been resolved. However, these propaganda projects and models were to form the basis of the now famous avant-garde buildings built between 1923 and the 1930s when Soviet architecture influenced the West, rather than vice versa. All were designed by Soviet architects, with the exception of a few by Le Corbusier and Erich Mendelsohn.
The emphasis was on the rapid building of communal housing and services, workers’ clubs, palaces of culture and department stores. These were intended to improve the education and living conditions of the working class and relieve women from domestic work, allowing them to take a full part in industrial production. In the First Five Year Plan (1928–32) top priority was given to building construction to support rapid development in the electrical, iron, steel and transport industries.
Narkonfin, Moisei Ginzburg and Ignaty Milinis, 1930
Many of these iconic buildings are still standing, albeit some in a poor state of repair. However, they remain a tribute to the power of the Marxist-Leninist ideology that produced the world’s first workers’ and peasants’ socialist state, a state that became the patron of modern art and architecture for over seven decades.
This article was first printed in the SCRSS Digest, issue 3, autumn 2017: www.scrss.org.uk/publications.
Published in Architecture
Carolyn Pouncy tells the story of how Russian ballet was modernised, democratised and eventually revitalised by the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Ask people unfamiliar with dance history where ballet originated, and many will say, “Russia.” Although the wrong answer—ballet originated at the court of Louis XIV, based on formal dance traditions already developed in Italy and brought to France with Catherine de Médicis—the perception reflects the outsized influence of Russian ballet since the arrival of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris in 1909. So it probably comes as something of a surprise to learn that ballet in Russia itself almost did not survive the October Revolution of 1917.
Agrippina Vaganova in Esmeralda, St. Petersburg, ca. 1910
The problem was simple: from its debut, ballet existed as an aristocratic art form, supported by courts and, until the early years of the twentieth century, chronicling the adventures of princes and princesses, fauns and fairies, sylphs and spirits of various sorts. Its pirates were romantic corsairs, its peasants and shepherds were light-hearted flute players, its Gypsies were royalty in disguise or lost at birth. Everyone bathed often, and there was not a worker in sight.
Imperial autocracy, as a system, exaggerated these problems. The imperial theatres and their schools operated as government departments, intertwined with the tsar’s household in the most intimate fashion. Although the dancers came from lower on the social scale—and often subscribed to liberal politics, especially during and after the revolution of 1905—everything about their daily lives, from the moment they entered the doors of the academy on Rossi Street as children, to the guaranteed pensions they received in retirement twenty years later, separated them from the poverty that afflicted the vast majority of Russia’s population and linked them to the rarefied world of the aristocracy.
When the Bolsheviks completed their coup, the former imperial theatres faced numerous problems. Although the lack of state support for sets, costumes, salaries, and pensions had perhaps the most dramatic impact on the lives of individual dancers, perhaps a bigger loss for Russian ballet as a whole was the mass exodus of personnel before and after Great October.
Ballet in the Western world took off at this time, precisely because the fleeing dancers brought their expertise and their training with them. But those who remained behind, for whatever reason, found themselves in dire straits. Almost half of the dancers in the imperial theatres of St. Petersburg emigrated in the late 1910s and early 1920s, meaning that simply mounting a performance of a classic like Swan Lake, Giselle, or The Nutcracker became next to impossible.
Scarce food meant that the skilled dancers who remained performed in workers’ clubs that paid in bread. Scarce fuel left dancers bundled in clothes over their skimpy costumes, stripping off the layers in the wings just before they ran on stage and rushing back to cover up as soon as their divertissement finished. Each morning students broke the ice on the water sprinkled over the wooden floors to prevent skidding.
Bolshoi Ballet school in the 1920s. Courtesy of Russia in Photos, https://russiainphoto.ru
Perhaps more devastating still was a problem unique to ballet, an art form that from its beginnings until the present day has been passed on by word of mouth from teacher to student. When so many dancers left, they took with them the living memory of steps, how roles were performed, and transferred that oral tradition westward. Those who stayed struggled to preserve what they recalled, even devising the first system of dance notation to record the old ballets.
The art itself suffered from the exodus, because the dancers and choreographers and musicians who left tended to be the ones with the best prospects abroad: stars like Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Michel Fokine. Those left behind were not always second-tier, but they had to train an entire new generation of students to replace those who fled.
Yet as we all know, ballet in the fledgling Soviet Union did not die. The first change came when Anatoly Lunacharsky, People’s Commissar of Education, convinced Lenin that “gentry culture” could have its place in the new Soviet state. Trends already underway toward more modern, less narrative ballets accelerated in the new cultural climate, finding their ultimate expression in the work of George Balanchine (another émigré) and Fedor Lopukhov, who stayed.
The rechristened state theatres continued to struggle, fending off constant accusations of backward-looking tendencies with melodramatic explorations of workers and factories, followed in due course with earnest (but seldom earnest enough) portrayals of national culture. Agrippina Vaganova and Vladimir Ponomarev revitalised the teaching methods at the Choreographic Academy in Leningrad, students such as Galina Ulanova and Marina Semyonova put those methods into practice, and in time the Soviet government of Stalin and its successors realised that ballet offered a ready means to impress foreign visitors, including ambassadors.
The final scene from The Flames of Paris (Plamia Parizha), one of the first "revolutionary" ballets, staged in 1932. Courtesy of Russia in Photos, https://russiainphoto.ru
The old ballets were restaged in new, more ideologically acceptable forms, without the archaic nineteenth-century mime. The Bolshoi and the Kirov troupes, carefully selected for political reliability, received permission to travel abroad, and Russian ballet once again became the touchstone of world dance - no longer as an aristocratic art form but as an integral part of a state-sponsored attempt to create a socialist society, a 'workers’ paradise'.
The democratisation of Russian ballet which was hastened, if not caused, by the Russian Revolution, also had wider ripple effects on the history of ballet in Europe in the twentieth century. Rigid class structures were breaking down anyway, and all the arts - poetry, drama, film - reflected this, but the exodus resulting from the Revolution was a significant stimulus to the modernisation of the sometimes anachronistic art form of ballet, across the world.
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Evangelicals, Politics, and the Kingdom of God
by William L. Anderson
Because the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks fell upon a Sunday, it hardly was surprising that the incident was recognized in many churches in the United States. Americans are not alone in commemorating anniversaries of important events, but from what I saw the 9/11 services in many evangelical churches went beyond simple commemoration, moving into the infusion of Christianity with the American State, something the ancients once called syncretism.
Before going further regarding the relationship of American evangelicals with the U.S. State, I will point out that evangelicals hardly are the only churchgoers in this country that mix the Kingdom of God with the Kingdom of Mammon. As one who receives the regular emails from Sojourners, which tends to represent the thinking of the “liberal” American churches, I can see how millions of people who are part of those religious circles are taught that the American Welfare State IS the Kingdom of God, and that the so-called intention of any law intended to further that State equates with directives from the Bible.
(One has to remember, however, that liberal American churches, while giving the Bible some sort of mystical authority without really believing what it says, hold to very different standards of beliefs than do evangelicals. Theological liberals tend to speak in religious languages that manage to say a lot of things that reveal little actual belief, with language used not to describe something, but rather to hide what liberals do not believe. For the most part, a vision of a socialist and welfarist America – the original vision of American Progressives of more than a century ago – has captivated the pulpits and the seminaries of their denominations. If they believe their reading of Scripture can be mixed into that vision, then Scripture is acceptable, and anything else is ignored or described in such vague terms as to make it meaningless.)
The focus of this commentary, then, is not upon the theological liberals who long ago abandoned historical Christianity for Progressive Statism. Instead, I am looking at the evangelicals who have abandoned historical Christianity for their own version of Progressive Statism, embracing the religion of “American Exceptionalism,” as though it were the essence of the Kingdom of God. Furthermore, I realize that what I am writing will make me very unpopular with people who claim to be following Christ, but Christianity is not a popularity contest and I believe that evangelicals have so lost their way when it comes to matters of Church and State that they are in danger of going the way of the theological liberals, who have become religiously irrelevant.
I recently spent nearly a month in Latvia, a small, Baltic independent country that was swallowed by the former Soviet Union for half a century. Although less than 10 percent of Latvians even attend church (apparently, communism did have its influences over time), those that do go tend to be quite active, and my wife, the girl we are adopting, and I went to a relatively new church while we were in that country.
One thing I noticed was the lack of political influences in that church. There was no Latvian flag outside or inside the building, even though there were church flags on the flagpoles, even though Latvians, like many from the Baltic countries, tend to be quite nationalistic. (They threw off an oppressor, the U.S.S.R., only two decades ago, and with very little bloodshed.) There was no mixing of Christianity and “Latvianism” during the services, which I cannot say is always the situation in the USA. (My church does not have flags of any country flying outside or displayed in the sanctuary or elsewhere in the building, so I must make sure not to make blanket statements.)
Why is that so? One reason, I believe, involves the religious roots of the United States. We are fond of saying things like “America was founded on religious freedom” and the like, although it is clear from even a cursory reading of U.S. History that while some people did seek to be able to practice their religion here after being persecuted in Europe, nonetheless religious freedom on these shores was a spotty thing.
We also hear that the USA was founded “as a Christian country,” and I remember hearing a talk from someone who believed that had the authors of the U.S. Constitution made it clear that this country was “Christian,” that somehow things would be different today. That really is nonsense; for that matter, a number of European countries at one time officially were “Christian” nations, and today none of those things matter, as no place in the world is as secular as Europe today.
However, the connection between historical Christianity and the effect it should have upon the actions of those that govern us was changed permanently in the United States during the 19th Century, first with Unitarianism and then with Progressivism. The political actions of both liberal and conservative “evangelicals” today are reflective of the secular, state-embracing political philosophies that rose during the 1800s and early 1900s, not the Christianity that was practiced by the Early Church, and certainly not of the Bible.
I cannot emphasize that point enough. When American evangelicals launch campaigns to deal with attempts to outlaw the “under God” portion of the Pledge of Allegiance, they are not preserving religious freedom, nor are not paying homage to the ideals of liberty that inspired many of the founders of this nation. Instead, they are endorsing a pledge created by a socialist who despised the founders of this country and who hated the views that the framers of the U.S. Constitution had on law and the state. Indeed, the Pledge of Allegiance is the antithesis of all of those ideals upon which conservative evangelicals claim to be supporting and it is collectivist and Progressivist to the core. Yet, because it has the phrase “under God,” Christians are willing to engage in what only can be idolatry and pledge their troth to another god.
Having grown up in the conservative evangelical subculture and still being part of it, I have picked up some insights as to why people who believe in God and who hold to the inerrancy of the Bible have sold out to the State. The answers are more complicated and nuanced than one might expect to read in a publication like the New York Times, which treats evangelicals as though they were alien invaders who have no right even to exist in our society.
Because I am dealing with the modern evangelicals, I will not cover the influence of the Unitarians of the 19th Century, except to say that they were part of nearly every major advancement of State power, including the public school movement in Massachusetts, and the Civil War. Certainly, by the end of the 1800s, the Unitarian influence began to wane, as theological liberalism took hold in the major Protestant denominations.
It is not hard to understand why theological liberals embraced the Progressive agenda of expansion of State power and the undermining of doctrines such as natural rights, as well as the viewpoint that law should be a “positive” force in making people engage in specified public duties. (This is as opposed to law being a check on those in power; Progressives wanted the law to advance government power, not restrain it.)
Liberals by 1900 had given up on the historical doctrines of Christianity, including Creation, the Fall, and Redemption through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Instead, liberals decided that while they did not believe the Biblical events actually happened, the purpose of Christianity should be to create a “Heaven on earth” through social legislation. The “purpose” in life would be the implementation of “good works,” but good works done through the actions of the State and the “experts” employed in government bureaucracies.
The liberals have changed neither their message nor their mission. They have embraced nearly every totalitarian movement that promised “free healthcare,” including the notorious and murderous regime of Pol Pot at the height of its terror. Today, they champion environmentalism, welfarism, and every government program that has been created in the name of “helping the poor.” No matter how many times government fails and no matter how many times socialist dictatorships are exposed, the liberals will continue to draw their water from the same polluted well, and nothing ever will change.
The evangelicals, however, have taken a different path but have ended at the doorstep of Statism as have their liberal counterparts. Although evangelicals did not openly become involved in the modern scourge of partisan politics until about 1980, they did embrace Progressivism as tightly as did the liberals, and there are many reasons why that happened.
First, Progressives promoted Prohibition, and that was the cause that allowed the theological liberals and conservatives to break bread together, although they did not follow exactly the same paths to Prohibition. The liberals tended to be tied to the wealthy Progressives, such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (Rockefeller contributed much of the money for the construction of the Riverside Church in Manhattan, which even today is a center of theological liberalism and leftism. He also was a major supporter of Union Theological Seminary, which was one of the early seminaries to promote the “Social Gospel.”)
Theological conservatives, on the other hand, were concentrated among the middle and lower-income groups on the economic ladder, and they could see the destructive effects of alcoholism upon individuals and families. Indeed, the leading evangelist of the day, Billy Sunday, was a major promoter of Prohibition, although he hardly had the same influence as did the wealthy Progressives, who believed that making alcohol illegal would help create a class of people that could be better directed by the “experts” of the State.
Second, because the evangelicals (at that time, called “Fundamentalists”) tended to be less-wealthy than theological liberals, the Populist-Progressive message had a lot of appeal to them, and Progressive politicians such as Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman and Theo Bilbo were able to take advantage of their resentment. These men also pitched their Progressivism in a virulent racism that created a syncretistic Christianity that built a racially-based foundation of belief. In that set of beliefs, one could resent people of another race, blame them for one’s own ills, and have it blessed by both the church and the authorities. (Fundamentalists held onto their racial separatism and were the last of the Christian groups to admit blacks into their churches and schools. Many of them cited the non-existent “Curse of Ham” in the book of Genesis as the basis of their beliefs and this is not the only time that Fundamentalists have misused passages of Holy Scripture to push viewpoints that are not Biblical.)
I emphasize the Progressive Era because this was the time that the modern dichotomy was set between the Fundamentalists and the Theological Liberals, and it was the time when the patterns for both groups were determined. It also is the time when many of the hymns that appear in Fundamentalist hymnals were written, a time when churches cheered on America’s military ventures in Cuba and the Philippines and in Europe.
Since that time, both Liberals and Fundamentalists (now under the overall umbrella of evangelicals, although the term also includes people who would disclaim any Fundamentalist ties) continue to embrace Progressivism and outright statism. For the liberals, the State itself functions as God, or at least it is the main conduit through which God acts. Evangelicals, on the other hand, have a more complex relationship with the American State.
As Laurence Vance has noted in numerous articles, the evangelicals (or conservatives in that camp) tend to have a near-worshipful view of the U.S. Armed Forces. They also are near-united in having views that abortion-on-demand not only is evil, but should be outlawed, and most of them who are active in anti-abortion movements believe the outlawing should be done via an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (Ron Paul’s belief that an amendment is not the right thing to do, given the constitution’s separation of powers doctrines, tends to be marginalized by the evangelical conservatives, but more on Dr. Paul later.)
From the Progressive Era well into the 1970s, the conservative evangelicals tended to support whatever was “American,” although they really were not tied to either major political party. Southern evangelical conservatives tended to vote for Democrats (as did liberals), and evangelicals from the rest of the country were somewhat split. If there is a ground zero for modern evangelical political involvement, it came not (as some might think) with the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court forced all states to legalize abortion on demand, but rather the 1976 election of Jimmy Carter as president.
Carter was the first president in my memory to lay claim to the “born again” criteria that is essential to the evangelical experience. Because evangelicals really are a minority in this country, they tend to grasp onto celebrities, sports figures, and other public people who say they are Christians. For example, when Gerald Ford became president after Richard Nixon’s resignation, Christianity Today ran an article asking of there was “A Christian in the White House” because it was rumored that Ford was a practicing believer.
Evangelicals in droves voted for Carter, but they soon were disappointed in him. For one, the Democratic Party that Carter represented was not the party that many evangelicals had supported post-World War II. This was the party of Ted Kennedy and George McGovern. It was the party of militant support for abortion on demand, and it was the party of the very intellectuals and Theological Liberals that absolutely despised evangelicals. While the Democrats did not mind having evangelical votes for Carter, they let it be known that they did not want these “religious fanatics” in their party. Thus, whatever evangelical support Carter might have had, the Democrats deliberately drove out the conservatives.
Second, the Carter presidency was a time of high unemployment and high inflation, and his legacy was one of failure. (I wrote a revisionist piece on the Carter presidency several years ago and noted that he did a number of good things during his stay in office, but that neither he nor the Democrats have wanted to take credit for them because they involved creating new opportunities for entrepreneurs, which meant that some people might have become rich in the process.)
Ronald Reagan was the first candidate of either party to gain the overt endorsements of groups openly tied to evangelicals. The late Jerry Falwell, then the president of Liberty University, started a group called Moral Majority that laid out much of what would be the governing principles for both Republican and (ironically) Democratic administrations since that time.
The Religious Right, as the MM and other such groups were called, wanted to see more people in prison, a ramped up war against drugs, more overseas U.S. military ventures, and more powers granted to the police. While supporting limited individual gun rights and cuts in tax rates, the Religious Right gave some lip service to limited government, but in the end the expansion of the Warfare State, the refusal to cut back on the Welfare State, and the growing moves to support militarization of the police ultimately resulted in what we have in this country: the Warfare-Welfare-Police State.
The U.S. prison population, which stood at about 300,000 when Reagan was elected, has mushroomed to more than 2.1 million, a quarter of the incarcerated people on the globe and by far the highest number for a single nation. Never in the history of the USA has it been easier for someone to be arrested and charged with a “crime” that not long ago would not have been considered a legal transgression. Furthermore, with their slavish desire for state-sponsored executions, and their view that police and prosecutors should have a “free hand” to “do their jobs,” we have seen an explosion of police and prosecutorial misconduct for which there is little or no legal accountability, much less moral accountability.
There are many reasons for this, but I firmly hold that one of the main reasons has been the renewed vigor of direct involvement in politics by conservative American evangelicals. With their rules-based religious beliefs and their religious devotion to “American Exceptionalism,” American religious conservatives have managed to create the Police State that slowly but surely is being turned against them.
I hardly believe that only conservative evangelicals are to blame. After all, Paul Krugman and Ben Bernanke are not Christian conservatives, nor is Barack Obama and certainly not the Democratic Party. Nonetheless, the Progressive style of governance that is so destructive has been enhanced by the Religious Right, which looks for a “law enforcement” solution to nearly everything and operates upon the mistaken belief that the police always will do the right thing.
The current political season does not offer any change. Ron Paul still is reviled among Religious conservatives, even though he is pro-life and wants to preserve religious freedom. However, Dr. Paul is not an adherent to a belief in a magical “American Exceptionalism” and has strongly criticized American military adventures abroad, something that never will endear him to the Christian Right.
American liberty is rapidly disappearing and the Religious Right has played an important role in empowering the worst among us. This was not supposed to be the case, but whenever people seek to impose the Kingdom of God through politically-sponsored violence, the sad results are inevitable. The United States of America is not the Kingdom of God, nor is it the “Shining City on a Hill.” It is simply a country whose political leaders decided long ago that individual liberty should be replaced by collectivism, and the Christian conservatives were there to answer the call.
William L. Anderson, Ph.D., teaches economics at Frostburg State University in Maryland, and is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He also is a consultant with American Economic Services.
Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com.
6 Comments | Culture, religion | Permalink
You are currently browsing the DumpDC blog archives for the day Thursday, October 27th, 2011.
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Upcoming Albums
discordpod@gmail.com
Discord and Rhyme is a podcast where we discuss the albums we love, song by song.
027: The Jam - Setting Sons (1979)
026: Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica (1969)
025 (feat. Dave Weigel): Yes - The Yes Album (1971) and Drama (1980)
024 (feat. Libby Cudmore): The B-52’s - Wild Planet (1980)
023: Kate Bush - The Dreaming (1982)
022: Blue Öyster Cult - Secret Treaties (1974)
021 (feat. Barbara Manning): The 6ths - Wasps’ Nests (1995)
020: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raising Sand (2007)
019: Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life (1976)
018: Devo - Duty Now for the Future (1979)
017 (feat. Shivam Bhatt): Takashi Tateishi - Mega Man 2 OST (1988)
016: Procol Harum - Exotic Birds and Fruit (1974)
015: Parliament - Mothership Connection (1975)
014: Funkadelic - Maggot Brain (1971)
Simply Having a Wonderful Discord & Rhyme
013: Meat Puppets - Forbidden Places (1991)
012: Rhiannon Giddens - Tomorrow Is My Turn (2015)
011: Joni Mitchell - Blue (1971)
010: X-Ray Spex - Germfree Adolescents (1978)
009: Janet Jackson - Control (1986)
008 (feat. Dave Weigel): Todd Rundgren - A Wizard, a True Star (1973)
007: Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Emerson, Lake & Palmer (1970)
006: Aretha Franklin - I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967)
005: Dave Matthews Band - Under the Table and Dreaming (1994)
004: Deltron 3030 - Deltron 3030 (2000)
003: Ween - The Mollusk (1997)
002: The Moody Blues - On the Threshold of a Dream (1969)
001: Earth, Wind, & Fire - All 'N All (1977)
This Is Comp
Nuggets Disc 4, Tracks 1-8
Nuggets Disc 3, Tracks 24-30
Nuggets Disc 3, Tracks 9-15
This website and all episodes' discussion/commentary © 2018—2019 Discord & Rhyme. Excerpts from recordings appearing in episodes are included for purposes of review only, and all rights to such material remain property of their copyright holders. Please note that we make a good-faith effort to ensure all information included in these episodes is accurate, but if we get something wrong, let us know at discordpod@gmail.com and we will print a correction in the show notes. Website design by Amanda Rodgers. Thank you for visiting, and be ever wonderful.
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Jesus saved a women from being stoned to death for adultery, but in John 8:1-11 and in Numbers 32:36 a man was stoned to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath. Why?
Is the Gospel Passage in Mark 8:36 in any way related to Matthew's description of Satan tempting Jesus with 'rule over the whole world'?
How did Barnabas, being a Levite possess a land, while the Levites were instructed not to possess lands of their own (Numbers 18:20-21; Deuteronomy 10:8-9) as per the law?
Why is a bronze serpent used to save the Israelites in Numbers 21:8-9?
Why did God use a symbol of death to bring healing? (Numbers 21:8)
Is the Spirit of adoption in Rom 8:5-17 connected to the Spirit of God who was promised in Ezekiel 36:27?
Why was LAND valued over love? (Numbers 36:8)
Tim Maas Retired Quality Assurance Specialist with the U.S. Army
I would say that the situation noted in the question was a necessary consequence of adapting a Law in which males were given preference with respect to inheritance of land to a situation where there was no male heir.
If the daughters of Zelophehad had been granted full inheritance rights (as if they had been sons), and then had married someone outside their own tribe, the result would have been an unjustified diminishing of their own tribe's allotment of land, since the rights to their portion of their tribe's inheritance would have been transferred to the tribes of their respective husbands. With time and repetition, this would have resulted in a hopeless blurring not just of tribal boundaries, but also of ancestral lineages, which were of great importance in that culture. (Even the genealogy of Mary, as given in Luke 3:23-38, makes no mention of Mary herself, despite the fact that she was the mother of the Son of God.) (Also, as important as love relationships are, land in a sense is more fundamental, since it is permanent, while even the most devoted love relationships end at some point.)
Zelophehad's daughters were not being denied the right to marry, but only being required to marry someone from their own tribe, so that the tribe's land allotment would not be diminished. By my understanding, if they had had a brother, there would not have been a controversy, since he would have inherited the whole of Zelophehad's land, and his sisters could have married anyone they chose (even outside of their tribe).
While this system may have been patriarchal by our standards, it affected all the women of Israel equally. Any woman (with or without a brother) who married outside her tribe forfeited her right to land from her own tribe's allotment.
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New York World's Fair (1939-1940 : New York, N.Y.)
Manuscripts and Archives Division. The New York Public Library
New York (State)--New York
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/9c53dd3e-49d0-e667-e040-e00a18061487
This Rights Statement should be used for Items for which the copyright status is unknown and for which the organization that has made the Item available has undertaken an effort to determine the copyright status of the Work. Typically, this Rights Statement is used when the organization is missing key facts essential to making an accurate copyright status determination.
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/UND/1.0/
New York World's Fair (1939-1940 : New York, N.Y.). Germany, 1936-1939. 1935 - 1945. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/9c53dd3e-49d0-e667-e040-e00a18061487. (Accessed July 19, 2019.)
New York World's Fair (1939-1940 : New York, N.Y.), (1935 - 1945) Germany, 1936-1939. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/9c53dd3e-49d0-e667-e040-e00a18061487
New York World's Fair (1939-1940 : New York, N.Y.). Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America <http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/9c53dd3e-49d0-e667-e040-e00a18061487>.
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Sustainable Development Solutions Network | National and Regional Networks
http://unsdsn.org/what-we-do/national-and-regional-networks/
Top Trump aide reportedly talked sanctions with Russian envoy
Recycling CO2
Patriotic Millionaires: “Please Tax Us!” (w/Guest Art Lipson)
Thom Hartmann Program
Thom talks with Art Lipson (member of the Patriotic Millionaires), who attended a recent town hall meeting of Utah rep Jason Chaffetz, who was forced to back away from a plan to sell of public lands after pressure from constituents. They also discuss why some wealthy Americans are calling out for more taxes on themselves.
The People’s Tribunal on the Iraq War, Day Two: Karen Dolan
On Day 2 of the CODEPINK #IraqTribunal, participants provided testimony on the costs of the invasion and occupation.
The People’s Tribunal on the Iraq War, Day Two: Peter Van Buren
Construction Begins on Final Section of Dakota Access Pipeline
Headlines Feb 10, 2017
In North Dakota, construction crews have resumed work on the final section of the Dakota Access pipeline, after the Trump administration granted an easement to allow Energy Transfer Partners to drill beneath the Missouri River. The construction resumed as opponents of the pipeline filed a last-ditch legal challenge in a federal court in Washington, D.C., Thursday. They’re seeking an order halting construction while a separate lawsuit filed by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe proceeds in court. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg says he’ll hear arguments on the motion—on Monday.
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Jeremy Scott: The People's Designer
Vlad Yudin
Edwin Mejia
Matt Kapp
Patrick Solomon
Sebastián Kauderer
Colin Morvan
Matthew Adams
The Vladar Company[1]
September 18, 2015 (2015-09-18)
Jeremy Scott: The People's Designer is a 2015 documentary film directed by Vlad Yudin detailing the life of American fashion designer Jeremy Scott and his rise in the fashion industry.[2][3][4]
The film was released on September 18, 2015. It features appearances by CL from 2NE1, Jared Leto, Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Devon Aoki, Katy Perry, Rita Ora, Paris Hilton, ASAP Rocky, and Nicky Hilton.
Jeremy Scott: The People's Designer was not widely reviewed prior to its initial limited run in theaters. Adam Tschorn of Los Angeles Times was mixed in his review. He highlighted it for "offer[ing] a odd thumbnail sketch of the reigning crown prince of fashion," but predicted Scott's fan to be "frustrated by the film because the brush strokes are broad, and the focus feels more about the scrum and swirl around the man than the man himself".[5]
^ Donadoni, Serena (September 17, 2015). "Jeremy Scott: The People's Designer (PG-13)". The Village Voice. Retrieved August 25, 2016.
^ Frank Scheck (September 17, 2015). "'Jeremy Scott: The People's Designer': Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved October 24, 2015.
^ Alyssa Vingan (September 18, 2015). "'Jeremy Scott: The People's Designer' is an Inspiring Rags to Riches Tale for Industry Hopefuls". Fashionista. Retrieved October 24, 2015.
^ Marcy Medina (September 4, 2015). "Jeremy Scott on 'Jeremy Scott: The People's Designer'". Women's Wear Daily. Retrieved October 24, 2015.
^ Tschorn, Adam (September 17, 2015). "Review: 'People's Designer' lightly stitches together the story of Jeremy Scott". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 25, 2016.
Jeremy Scott: The People's Designer on IMDb
Jeremy Scott: The People's Designer on Facebook
This article about a biographical documentary film is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jeremy_Scott:_The_People%27s_Designer&oldid=865096430"
English-language films
2010s documentary films
Documentary films about fashion designers
American documentary films
American films
Biographical documentary film stubs
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Northern Correctional Institution
Osborn Correctional Institution
Somers, Connecticut
42°1′24.87″N 72°30′23.66″W / 42.0235750°N 72.5065722°W / 42.0235750; -72.5065722Northern CI
Level 5 (Maximum)
Connecticut Department of Correction
1995-1995 David May 1995-1996 Robert Kupec 1996-1999 Giovanny Gomez 1999-2003 Larry J. Myers 2003-2006 Wayne Choinski 2006-2009 Jeffrey McGill 2009-2011 Angel Quiros 2011-2014 Edward Maldonado 2014- 2016 Anne Cournoyer
2016- current. Geoffery Pelkey
Northern Correctional Institution (NCI) is a high-security state prison in Somers,[2][3] in the northern part of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The prison houses the state's male convicts serving long sentences for violent crimes and it housed the death row for inmates before the abolition of the death penalty in Connecticut.
It is the designated restrictive housing facility for the Connecticut Department of Correction, managing those inmates who have demonstrated a serious inability to adjust to confinement, particularly those that pose a threat to the safety and security of the community, staff, and other inmates.
The institution Group Safety Threat Member program was relocated from the Garner Correctional Institution in order to centralize restrictive housing functions. In response to this, and with a commensurate increase in the number of young offenders, the facility more than doubled the size of its educational staff in order to serve those inmates who fall under federal mandates and require special education.
2 Death row and "Old Sparky"
3 Notable prisoners
The Northern C.I. was completed in January 1995 and received its first inmates in March 1995. [4] Also in 1995, Connecticut's death row inmates were moved to the Northern C.I. from the Osborn Correctional Institution.[5]
In February 1997, the Chronic Disciplinary Unit arrived at Northern.
In November 1999, the Security Risk Group Threat population arrived.
In August 2000, Warden Larry J. Myers' face was slashed by inmate John Barletta, leaving him seriously injured. Barletta was serving 60 years for a 1992 drive-by shooting murder in Norwalk and life in prison without parole for the murder of his cellmate in 1999 at Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown, Connecticut.
In November 2000, the Chronic Disciplinary Unit was removed from the facility.
In September 2004, the Chronic Disciplinary Unit was returned to the facility.
As of July 1, 2014, the prison has 258 inmates(178 Accused 80 Sentenced). The prison is controlled by 310 personnel from the Connecticut Department of Correction under the supervision of Warden Anne Cournoyer and Deputy Warden William Mulligan.[6]
Death row and "Old Sparky"[edit]
Connecticut legislated lethal injection as its sole method of execution in 1995.[7] The last person executed by electrocution was Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky in May 1960.[8] Connecticut's "Old Sparky" has not been tested since it was moved from Wethersfield to the Somers State Prison (1962-1994), Osborn Correctional Institution (1994–present) in Somers in 1962, and prison officials claim the prison's electrical system cannot handle it.[9] The death penalty was abolished in Connecticut in 2012.
Notable prisoners[edit]
Steven Joseph Hayes, perpetrator of the Cheshire, Connecticut, home invasion murders[10]
Joshua Komisarjevsky, perpetrator of the Cheshire, Connecticut, home invasion murders[11]
As both of these men were on death row and the death penalty has been abolished, they are considered regular inmates. Due to the severity of their crimes, it was deemed unsafe to house them in the Connecticut DOC. Both have been moved to maximum security facilities in Pennsylvania.
^ "Somers town, Connecticut." U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved on August 16, 2010.
^ "Zoning Map." Somers, Connecticut. Retrieved on August 16, 2010.
^ "Northern Correctional Institution." Connecticut Department of Correction. Retrieved on January 1, 2014.
^ "Northern Correctional Institution." Connecticut Department of Correction. Retrieved on August 16, 2010.
^ Connecticut Department of Corrections, Northern Correctional Institution Website
^ http://www.cga.ct.gov/2005/rpt/2005-R-0136.htm
^ http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/10/18/news/doc4cbbd3b030403738863502.txt?viewmode=fullstory
^ https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/27/nyregion/execution-would-be-the-first-since-1960.html
^ " HAYES,STEVEN JOSEPH." Connecticut Department of Correction. Retrieved on November 10, 2010.
^ " KOMISARJEVSKY,JOSHUA A." Connecticut Department of Correction. Retrieved from Walker Reception Center on December 10, 2011.
Connecticut portal
Criminal justice portal
Northern Correctional Institution (Connecticut Department of Correction)
Connecticut Department of Correction prisons
Bridgeport Correctional Center
Brooklyn Correctional Institution
Cheshire Correctional Institution
Corrigan-Radgowski Correctional Center
Enfield Correctional Institution
Garner Correctional Institution
Hartford Correctional Center
MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution
Manson Youth Institution
New Haven Correctional Center
Robinson Correctional Institution
Willard-Cybulski Correctional Institution
York Correctional Institution
Bergin Correctional Institution
Gates Correctional Institution
Niantic Annex
Old Newgate Prison
Webster Correctional Institution
Wethersfield State Prison
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Northern_Correctional_Institution&oldid=903624904"
Prisons in Connecticut
Buildings and structures in Tolland County, Connecticut
Capital punishment in Connecticut
1995 establishments in Connecticut
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Progress of intraocular pressure before and after cataract surgery in case of pseudoexfoliation syndrome versus control group without pseudoexfoliation syndrome
Hebel, O.; Dardenne, C.M.; Remmel, R.
Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science 38(4 PART 1-2): S175
Washout of pseudoexfoliation material combined with cataract surgery: a new surgical approach to lower intraocular pressure in pseudoexfoliation syndrome. International Ophthalmology 35(2): 209-214, 2015
Intraocular pressure in nonglaucomatous eyes with pseudoexfoliation syndrome after cataract surgery. Ophthalmic Surgery and Lasers 29(6): 466-471, 1998
Intraocular pressure elevation after cataract surgery and its prevention by oral acetazolamide in eyes with pseudoexfoliation syndrome. Journal of Cataract and Refractive Surgery 44(2): 175-181, 2018
The effects of cyclopentolate on intraocular pressure and retrobulbar hemodynamics in patients with pseudoexfoliation syndrome and pseudoexfoliation glaucoma. European Journal of Ophthalmology 14(5): 394-400, 2004
Short-term fluctuation of intraocular pressure is higher in patients with pseudoexfoliation syndrome despite similar mean intraocular pressure: a retrospective case-control study. Graefe's Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology 253(1): 107-114, 2015
Intraocular pressure after extracapsular cataract extraction and intraocular lens implantation in pseudoexfoliation syndrome. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science 37(3): S766, 1996
Spontaneous dislocation of intraocular lens with capsule as a late complication of cataract surgery in patients with pseudoexfoliation syndrome --five case reports. Klinische Monatsblatter für Augenheilkunde 221(4): 273-276, 2004
Intraocular Pressure lowering following Phacoemulsification Cataract Extraction in patients with Pseudoexfoliation Syndrome. IOVS 41(4): S278, March 15, 2000
Impact of cataract surgery on intraocular pressure after filtering operation due to primary open angle glaucoma and secondary glaucoma in pseudoexfoliation syndrome. Klinische Monatsblatter für Augenheilkunde 219(3): 132-137, 2002
Positioning of the posterior intraocular lens in the longer term following cataract surgery in eyes with and without pseudoexfoliation syndrome. Acta Ophthalmologica 92(3): 253-258, 2014
Assessment of long-term intraocular lens (IOL) decentration and tilt in eyes with pseudoexfoliation syndrome (PES) following cataract surgery. Graefe's Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology 256(12): 2361-2367, 2018
Complicated extracapsular cataract surgery in pseudoexfoliation syndrome: a case report. British Journal of Ophthalmology 76(11): 692-693, 1992
Progress in understanding pseudoexfoliation syndrome and pseudoexfoliation-associated glaucoma. Canadian Journal of Ophthalmology. Journal Canadien d'Ophtalmologie 42(5): 657-658, 2007
Histological features of pseudoexfoliative material after cataract surgery in a case of pseudoexfoliation syndrome. Rinsho Ganka 51(7): 1393-1396, 1997
Pseudoexfoliation and the cataract surgeon: preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative issues related to intraocular pressure, cataract, and intraocular lenses. Journal of Cataract and Refractive Surgery 35(6): 1101-1120, 2009
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Amazon to build €80m logistics centre in Germany's Rhineland
Turkey and vodka most at-risk as retailers prepare for Christmas shoplifting spree
Why digital subscription is a win-win business model
Is Brexit causing a slump in German consumer confidence?
Ceta shambles exposes EU flaws in delivering trade deals, and democracy
DBRS gives Portugal BBB rating lifeline, ECB continues to buy debt
BASF factory explosion: how much damage was done at Ludwigshafen?
Are changing chocolate tastes behind Hotel Chocolat's 90% profit surge?
FedEx commits to France in massive hub expansion at Charles de Gaulle Airport
Unilever ups price of Marmite, blames Brexit despite making it in the UK
Why is Poland becoming so popular for commercial real estate investment?
Brexit, fuel prices, terrorism: easyJet profits feel the pinch
SABMiller looks to sell off Eastern European assets ahead of AB InBev merger
Why Berlin is Europe's property investment hotspot
Fintech vs banks: the battle heats up
How much beer will an AB InBev SABMiller super-brewer produce?
As Christmas shopping season looms, retailers across Europe are bracing themselves for increases in footfall and subsequent spates of theft. Groceries, including roasting joints and bottles of spirits, are the most at-risk products. New research sponsored by Checkpoint Systems – provider of merchandise availability solutions to the retail industry – has revealed that retailers...
More than eight in 10 Europeans already rely on subscription-based services. Once largely confined to newspaper and magazines, the subscription economy has gone digital and expanded from online entertainment—think Netflix, Spotify and Apple Music—to an array of fast-growing sectors, from education to retail. Why is digital subscription becoming so ubiquitous? Because it serves...
The UK vote to leave the European Union has been impacting consumer confidence in Germany, according to a report by consumer analysts GfK. German consumer sentiment has not followed a uniform trend in October. While economic prospects are improving again after three successive falls, both income expectations and propensity to buy have declined. The overall consumer confidence indicat...
After seven years of tiresome discussion and arduous formulation, the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta) looked as if it had cleared the final hurdle. Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau was ready to head to Brussels to sign the treaty with European leaders this week, only to be held up in what has proven to be an embarrassing episode for the EU. The reaso...
Canada’s Dominion Bond Rating Service (DBRS) has reaffirmed Portugal’s BBB (low) rating on its sovereign debt, meaning the European Central Bank can continue to buy debt from the country. In DBRS’s view the recent measures taken by the Portuguese government to promote banking stability could partly remove some of the uncertainties and concerns that have been surrounding ...
Leading German chemical producer BASF has confirmed it will gradually be resuming operations following an explosion and fire at its site in Ludwigshafen. Three workers lost their lives during the incident, while another 25 were injured. There is also a huge amount of structural and material damage, which the company revealed in a statement. Both steamcrackers were shut down as a resu...
Luxury chocolatier and retailer Hotel Chocolat has recorded a massive increase in profits for the year period to June 26 2016. Revenues increase from £81 million in the preceding year to June 28 2015 to £91 million, with profits jumping from £2.9 million to £5.6 million, an increase of 91 percent. Major growth areas came via the opening of seven new retail outlets ...
Logistics giant FedEx is expanding its distribution hub at Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG) Airport in a 30-year agreement costing at least €200 million. Once completed, this new facility will be one of the world’s most advanced express logistics hubs, featuring technology that will boost package sorting capacity by more than 40 percent. President of the French Republi...
Tesco and Unilever are at loggerheads over the prices of household staples from PG Tips and Comfort to Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Marmite. The increase in price of the latter has caused particular hysteria and panic, but the logic behind its explanation could be flawed. Unilever has blamed the problem on a fall in the value of the pound currency (around 16 percent since the UK vote t...
Poland and especially Warsaw, is a leader of Central Europe’s commercial real estate market. Poland's economy is considered one of the most attractive in Europe, and this is also reflected on the commercial real estate market. According to data provided by REAS – leading Polish real estate consulting agency – as many as 67 percent of investors believe Poland is "...
Major European budget airline easyJet has been through a turbulent few months. Last week its share value fell by 6.7 percent, sparked by the company’s warning that its profits could be reduced by as much as 25 percent this year. Numbers for the year-ending September 2016 do not look great for the low cost carrier – they show a drop in profits for the first time since 2009 i.e....
Asahi Group Holdings is reported to be interested in bidding for SABMiller’s assets in five Eastern European countries ahead of the creation of the world’s biggest brewer next week. AB InBev will acquire the South African-based beer producer to create one of the biggest mergers ever seen, a move which will produce enough beer to provide everyone in the UK 2,000 pints each yea...
Berlin’s burgeoning tech sector is spurring a new swathe residential development in the city, as international investors realise the income potential inherent in the local market. Recently rated as the top investment destination for global venture capitalists, Berlin is increasingly popular with technology, media and telecoms (TMT) start up firms, attracted by low commercial rent pr...
Fintech – the term coined for financial services technology – is an extremely fast-growing industry worldwide. In fact, the total global investment in Fintech between the years of 2010 and 2016 reached as high as $80bn. Its evolution can in large part be attributed to ‘disruptors’ – startups shaping the financial services landscape for good. Some argue that t...
AB InBev, already the world’s largest brewer, has secured a shareholder vote in favour of acquisition of SABMiller, the world’s second largest brewer. The companies have spent more than a year seeking regulatory approval from the likes of the European Union, and now the £79 billion deal looks set to go ahead by October 10 after a meeting earlier today. ...
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Waiwhakaiho River
Tūpare Gardens
July 15, 2018 Graeme Cash 1 Comment
Tūpare is a former private gardens open to the public in New Plymouth.
Tūpare is a 3.6 hectare heritage property managed by the Taranaki Regional Council, which means it is open and free to the public to visit.
Businessman Sir Russell Matthews and his wife Mary purchased the property on on the edge of the Waiwhakaiho River in 1931. At that time it was covered in blackberry, gorse and bracken. They begun building a home and developing the landscape gardens.
The Tudor-style house was designed by James Chapman-Taylor. There was a disagreement between Matthews and Chapman-Taylor over the size of the dining room and Matthews ended the agreement. Matthews did follow the original plans and it took him 12 years to complete construction.
Tūpare was purchased by the Queen Elizabeth II National Trust in 1984 and opened to the public.
The word tūpare means ‘garland of flowers’.
There are three suggested walking routes around Tūpare. The Boundary Trail circles around the property through Redwoods, bush and the garden. The Garden Walk criss-crosses through the main garden areas. The House Stroll is an easier walk through the some of the popular areas of the of the garden.
Dogs and bicycles are not permitted in the gardens.
The gardens are free to visit and are open 9am to 8pm during daylight savings and 9am to 5pm during the winter.
Tūpare is at 487 Mangorei Road, near the intersection with State Highway 3.
gardenGardensNew PlymouthNew ZealandNew Zealand TravelNZ TravelTaranakiTravelTudor-styleTūpareTūpare GardensWaiwhakaiho River
Te Rewa Rewa Bridge
Te Rewa Rewa Bridge is a pedestrian and cycleway bridge that crosses the Waiwhakaiho River in New Plymouth.
The bridge is a highlight on the 12.7 km New Plymouth Coastal Walkway, that runs from Pioneer Park at Port Taranaki to Bell Block Beach.
The 2.85 million dollar construction project began in 2008 and the bridge opened in June of 2010. The steel arch, concrete deck bridge is 70 metres in length and 2.5 metres wide. At it’s highest point it reaches 10 metres.
The Waiwhakaiho River, that it crosses, is a 30 km (19 mile) long river that flows off the the slopes of Mount Taranaki / Egmont to the Tasman Sea, near the suburb of Fitzroy.
The Te Rewa Rewa Bridge can be accessed off Clemow Road, Fitzroy, New Plymouth.
BridgeNew PlymouthNew ZealandNew Zealand TravelNZ TravelTaranakiTe Rewa Rewa BridgeTravelWaiwhakaiho River
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Category: W Series
W SERIES: Race 1, Hockenheim
History was made on Friday when 20 extremely talented racing drivers (18 permanent and 2 reserve drivers) took the track in Germany driving identical Formula 3 cars. What made this special was all of these racers were female. The first race weekend of the W Series calendar saw both wet and dry running, testing the drivers ability […]
Read More W SERIES: Race 1, Hockenheim
Sabré Cook: “To be a great driver, it takes a lot more than being fast”
As a Mechanical Engineering graduate, Sabré Cook has a great knowledge of the detail and technology used in racing cars, however she is not only an engineer, but has a very successful racing career too. I spoke to her in October ahead of competing in the final of the Infiniti Engineering Academy, racing in the […]
Read More Sabré Cook: “To be a great driver, it takes a lot more than being fast”
W Series Qualifiers: Who are the Australians hoping to make the final 18?
Australia’s love of motorsport is clear to see with the Australian F1 Grand Prix always having a large turnout. Despite there being relatively few racing series in the country compared with others nations, there are still many drivers from ‘down under’ hoping to make it big on the international stage. With Europe being considered the […]
Read More W Series Qualifiers: Who are the Australians hoping to make the final 18?
W Series Qualifiers: Who are the French and Spanish drivers hoping to make the cut?
With the selection process for the inaugural W Series fast approaching, 60 qualifiers will have to be whittled down to only 18. Spain and France are countries that are well represented at the highest level of motorsport and have been for some time, so who are the drivers hoping to continue this representation onto the […]
Read More W Series Qualifiers: Who are the French and Spanish drivers hoping to make the cut?
W Series Qualifiers: Who are the Central and Eastern Europeans hoping to make the final 18?
In recent years, the popularity of motorsport has risen in areas such as Eastern Europe. Although already popular, the success of F1 Grands Prix in Russia and Hungary (central Europe) and the remarkable comeback story of Robert Kubica, has continued to boost this. As home to some of the most competitive and challenging motorsport series […]
Read More W Series Qualifiers: Who are the Central and Eastern Europeans hoping to make the final 18?
W Series Qualifiers: Who are the German, Italian and Swiss racers aiming to make the final 18?
Germany and Italy are 2 of the nations most associated with motorsport powerhouses in Formula One, and so it is no surprise that there are many racers from these countries involved in W Series and hoping to both make it to the 2019 grid, and hopefully in the future to prestigious championships such as F1. […]
Read More W Series Qualifiers: Who are the German, Italian and Swiss racers aiming to make the final 18?
W Series Qualifiers: Who are the Americans and Canadians hoping to make the grid?
The USA is known for its proud motorsport heritage from NASCAR to Indycar. Despite F1 not being as popular in the country as it is in other areas of the world, the lure of European racing is still strong for young drivers hoping to make it to the highest level of motorsport they can. Although […]
Read More W Series Qualifiers: Who are the Americans and Canadians hoping to make the grid?
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Rare Book Cafe: Owen Felix of Tipperary, Ireland
A extraordinary thing happened on a recent Saturday that demonstrates just how modern technology has brought the world a lot closer. Carrie Carnes of Old Tampa Book Company had been scheduled to be the special guest on Rare Book Cafe, the new Blab TV live streaming program about antiquarian books, hosted by Steven Eisenstein and co-hosted by Thorne Donnelley.
Unfortunately, Carrie's computer wouldn't cooperate and she was never able to join the program. However, as fate would have it, an extraordinary gentleman did join the program and proceeded to conduct an amazing guided tour of his home in Tipperary, Ireland. His name is Owen Felix O'Neill, and he is an authority on early English Bibles, the owner of a most unusual collection of rare books, pamphlets, historical documents, and original prints, and, apparently, a reluctant bookseller, who by his own admission refuses to part with 90 per cent of his collection.
Felix also is a consummate host, whose tour of his 200-year-old home on the Rare Book Cafe is pure delight for the book lover. You can watch a replay of the program above. As technical difficulties were the order of the day, Felix joined the program earlier but could not be heard until about 15:58. For a little more than 40 minutes after that, Felix narrated and bantered with Steven and Thorne as he showed such treasures as a William Tyndale New Testament of 1526, a Shakespeare first folio, and Christopher Columbus' personal copy of the 1488 Travels to the Orient by John Mandeville. It was mesmerizing, each new item more astounding than the previous one.
Felix is a well known and respected book dealer in Ireland and the UK, and was called in to appraise the library collection at All Hallows College in Dublin as the 172-year-old institution prepared to sell some of its holdings to forestall closing last year. Felix discovered that several volumes had gone missing as had a collection of letters Jackie Kennedy wrote over a 15-year period to a priest friend who served at the college. Felix discovered that the plundering of valuable books at the school had gone on for years.
Felix also showed his 1877 copies of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, Abraham Lincoln's 1861 speech when he won the presidential election, Thomas Jefferson's signed passport, original hand-painted sketches from one of Capt. James Cook's tours of the Pacific Ocean in the 1760s and 1770s, and "the oldest bottle of Irish whiskey in the world."
What a delight! The visit was comfortable and most entertaining, and Felix promised to revisit Rare Book Cafe again. We can't wait.
Labels: Blab, Owen Felix O'Neill, Rare Book Cafe, Steven Eisenstein, Thorne Donnelley
SunLit Festival receives Best of the Bay Award
Michael Slicker and T. Allan Smith display Best of the Bay Award from Creative Loafing.
A new festival for book lovers launched last March in the week before the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair, and we were proud to be part of it. The first annual SunLit Festival began on Saturday, March 7 and culminated with the book fair the following weekend. It was fourteen events in nine days, all celebrating the written word.
On Wednesday this week, Creative Loafing, the magazine-style weekly newspaper that covers the arts, entertainment, dining, and politics in the Tampa Bay area, presented an award to SunLit Festival in its annual Best of the Bay Awards. SunLit Festival was proclaimed the Best New Fest for Bookworms, an entirely appropriate title certain to be worn with pride.
The first SunLit Festival featured such diverse activities as honoring the Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg, live literary combat, a tribute to the writing talents of Dave and Iola Brubeck, a focus on reading to infants, a celebration of the 100th anniversary of St. Petersburg's library, dramatic readings of local writers' works, a pub crawl with literature, an examination of how childhood reading shapes our lives, the opening night of the first season of the St. Petersburg Shakespeare Festival, a night hike in the woods with poetry, a celebration of Jack Kerouac, a Passover cookoff, word games with libations, and, of course, the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair.
It was the work of many individuals and organizations, who came together in the common cause of celebrating literature to produce an exciting series that drew attention to each of their efforts. It was a great surprise when Creative Loafing sent word that it was honoring SunLit Festival, and it was a great tribute to the efforts of so many people. It was all under the able guidance of the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance.
The future of SunLit Festival looks very bright, indeed, with planning now under way for the second annual edition. The Florida Antiquarian Book Fair invites book lovers from all over to come to St. Petersburg for SunLit Festival and the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair.
Below: A recording of a live streaming session from the night of the Best of the Bay Awards. For live streaming about the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair and things to see and do in the Tampa Bay area during these events, follow @FLBookFairPhoto on Twitter and Periscope.
Labels: 35th annual Florida Antiquarian Book Fair, Florida Antiquarian Book Fair, SunLIt Festival
Rare Book Cafe: How Thorne became a book dealer
Here's the latest episode of Rare Book Cafe, the world's first and only Blab TV show about antiquarian books. It was broadcast live today on blab.im at 2:30 p.m. EDT. In it, bookseller Thorne Donnelley, who owns Liberty Books in West Palm Beach and is an exhibitor at the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair, tells about his beginnings in the antiquarian book business.
This show has several new features, including a short segment with Edie Eisenstein, who loves miniature books and talks lovingly about them in this episode. Look for Edie to return as a regular feature in future episodes. Host Steven Eisenstein also introduced another new feature, Hidden Treasures, in which guests will be asked to discuss special volumes from their collections. Steve asks himself and others questions in another new feature called The Third Degree, an homage to the classic technique cops used to interrogate bad guys in old detective novels. Several visitors dropped in to ask questions about their own collections.
The Rare Book Cafe is sponsored by the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair and appears on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Check the Scheduled list in blab.com for times and dates. Subscribe to the program so you won't miss anything.
You can watch the replay of Rare Book Cafe above, or on blab.im if you want to see the comments from the audience shown in text on the side.
If you have thoughts or comments about Rare Book Cafe, please send an email. We'd love to hear from you.
Labels: Edie Eisenstein, Michael Slicker, Rare Book Cafe, Steven Eisenstein, Thorne Donnelley
Rare Book Cafe: Auto books for the grand prix?
Interesting discussion the other day on Rare Book Cafe. Everybody knows the Firestone Grand Prix will be two weeks earlier next year, coinciding with the weekend of the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair. That, of course, will make securing hotel rooms a challenge. (Best to book your rooms early.)
But Thorne Donnelley, who by now is a regular guest on Rare Book Cafe, had another take on the race car event. The town will be full of automobile enthusiasts. Why not capitalize on that, was Thorne's reasoning. Booksellers ought to make sure they plenty of such books in their inventory.
We think that's a great idea, and we encourage booksellers to put automotive books, particularly those great big pretty coffee table books with gorgeous photography that will have you drooling over Lamborghinis and Ferraris, near the top of their priority list if they can.
Labels: automotive books, Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, Florida Antiquarian Book Fair, Michael Slicker, Rare Book Cafe, Steven Eisenstein, Thorne Donnelley
Rare Book Cafe: People drop by with questions
This new platform indelicately called Blab is an interesting experiment. Because it's still in beta, many things are still being developed. Case in point: The text message feature that allows people who are not onscreen in this conversation platform to participate by sending comments to others watching as well as to those onscreen. If you haven't experienced it yet, go to Blab and search for Rare Book Cafe. Mark it on your calendar and plan to join us so you can get the full effect.
If you want to just sample it, there's an embedded version above in this entry. The drawback is that folks who are developing Blab haven't included the comments yet. There's just the video. This one has Miami Beach bookseller Steven Eisenstein, West Palm Beach bookseller Thorne Donnelley and me talking to various visitors, whom you can meet onscreen. However, there were other visitors who chose not to be onscreen. They made comments in the text message feature but since it's not included in the embedded version you can't see it here.
One way you can see the text message comments in the replay is to log into Blab the navigate to Replays and search for Rare Book Cafe. What you'll find there is the closest thing to the live version, complete with comments. Unfortunately, the comments don't scroll in synch with the audio, so you have to guess what comments went with what conversation onscreen.
If this sounds like a lot of complaining, it isn't meant to. This is a pretty nifty free platform for us to carry on an ongoing conversation about antiquarian books and related materials, and we aim to make use of it every chance we get. We're grateful to the folks at Blab who have created it and continue to improve it.
An interesting thing happened with this, our second official episode of Rare Book Cafe. Some people dropped by unexpectedly with questions about antiquarian books. It was delightful, and interesting. It was just the thing we hoped would happen. Some said they were just randomly poking around Blab and happened our session. We think that's terrific! Our purpose here is to increase the knowledge and awareness of rare books, maps, prints, and related ephemera. We're glad people are interested.
If we impart some information that helps people develop a passion for this subject, that is, in our view, beneficial to the antiquarian book business in general.
So, if you're reading this, you probably have a similar passion (or you've wandered far, far away from our original objective online today). Either way, we hope you'll tune into Rare Book Cafe and we hope you'll tell others. Most of all, we hope you'll join in the conversation. Our next LIVE session is on Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. ET.
TO GET ON BLAB: It's easy to sign onto Blab. It works best if you have a Twitter account. (In fact, we're not sure, but it might be the only way you can sign in now.) On your up-to-date Firefox browser or your Google Chrome browser, sign into Twitter. Using another tab, go to Blab and sign in using your Twitter account. Blab will bring in your Twitter profile information and you'll be set to go. Search for Rare Book Cafe and you'll find us, in a past session, in a current session (if it's the right time) or in a future session. If you find a future session, subscribe to it and you'll get notices about changes or more sessions. Right now, we're planning to be on Wednesdays at 3:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 2:30 p.m. The shows will last about an hour.
– T. Allan Smith,
official photographer and Internet guy,
Florida Antiquarian Book Fair
Labels: Rare Book Cafe, Steven Eisenstein, T. Allan Smith, Thorne Donnelley
Tampa Bay author's article features the book fair
Tampa Bay mystery writer Carol J. Perry’s article about this year’s Florida Antiquarian Book Fair just came out in Kings River Life Magazine. Evidently Carol spent her time at the book fair hunting down vintage mysteries, and found some remarkable ones for her effort.
Carol’s article reveals everything from a stack of 1960s Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazines marked at $10 each to a 1936 first edition of Graham Greene’s This Gun For Hire at $3,000. There were numerous examples of mystery books priced between those two extremes with familiar names like John D. MacDonald, Ellery Queen, Raymond Chandler, Stephen King, and Franklin W. Dixon. She even tells of a Florida mystery by Alfred Payson Terhune, who was better known for his Lad, A Dog and other books about collies. The book: a 1929 first edition of The Secret of Sea-Dream House. Price: $400.
The article is vividly illustrated with a photograph of Sonny Ideker's alcove, which featured many beautiful leather-bound volumes, and with closeups of many of the books discussed.
Kings River Life Magazine is an online publication that covers the San Joaquin Valley in California. In addition to local features, the magazine also includes a mystery fiction section that highlights author interviews and short stories.
Carol J. Perry’s Witch City Mysteries, a juvenile mystery series, are published by Kensington Publishing Corp. Her books include Look Both Ways, Tails, You Lose, and Caught Dead Handed.
Labels: 34th Florida Antiquarian Book Fair, Carol J. Perry, Florida Antiquarian Book Fair, Graham Greene, Raymond Chandler, vintage mysteries
Rare Book Cafe: If you missed it LIVE, watch it now
On Wednesday, September 2, we launched the first live streaming session of Rare Book Cafe, our new community for discussion of antiquarian books, maps, prints, ephemera and more. It's an informal gathering and we were pleased that people could stop by and say hello.
Blab is a new platform, so new that it isn't really even fully developed yet. Clearly, though, it has a lot of advantage over other streaming platforms and we're delighted to have the opportunity to use it. One of the things we like about it, despite the glitches that you'll see as the video progresses, is that is really is accessible. It's pretty easy to use. That's why we think as people discover it, they'll want to use it.
A note about the glitches: Madlyn Blom appears upside down in the video. We do not know what the issue is that has caused that. We hope to find out and correct it. The Blab format does not allow the text comments to be included in the replay so we encourage you to see the live version if you can.
People who love antiquarian books are going to find a lot of value in visiting Rare Book Cafe. We hope you'll join us. Right now we're planning to have sessions on Wednesdays at 3:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 2:30 p.m., following Steven Eisenstein's Buck on the Bookshelf, which is broadcast on wdbfradio.com from noon to 2 p.m. on Saturdays. Steven will be one of our hosts for the live Rare Book Cafe session.
Thank you to the participants today, Thorne Donnelley, owner of Liberty Books, LLC FABA in Palm Beach, Steven Eisenstein, owner of A-Book-A-Brac Books in Miami Beach, Libby Ware, owner of Toadlily Books in Atlanta and president of the Georgia Antiquarian Booksellers Association, and Madlyn Blom, owner of Old Bag Lady Books in Sun City Center, Florida. Also, thank you to those who listened or watched from the sidelines. We appreciate your interest and support.
We're remaining flexible about when to schedule the live sessions. Of course, we'd appreciate your thoughts and ideas about Rare Book Cafe, what you'd like to see, when you'd like to see it, and who you'd like to talk to in the antiquarian book trade. Comment below or send an email to floridabookfair2@gmail.com.
Labels: Blab, first LIVE session, live streaming, Rare Book Cafe
Rare Book Cafe: If you missed it LIVE, watch it no...
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Congress passes bills to reduce duplicative reports, improve access to public records
By Federal News Network Staff
By Elise Garofalo
Wednesday was a productive day on Capitol Hill. The House unanimously passed Senate amendments Wednesday to two bills that would eliminate duplicative agency reports and improve public access to presidential records. Across the hall, a Senate committee approved two critical Homeland Security Department nominees.
The Government Reports Elimination Act of 2014 (H.R. 4194) eliminates or modifies reports by certain federal agencies that have been deemed unnecessary or redundant. It does away with more than 40 reports from 17 different federal agencies. Among the reports to be slashed are a DHS report on the importation of products with cat and dog fur, and the Veterans Affairs Department’s annual report on procurement of health care items by VA medical facilities.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) introduced H.R. 4194 in March and the bill passed on April 28. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs picked it up by in July, and the bill passed the Senate with an amendment on Sept. 16.
Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) applauded the passage of H.R. 4194, while introducing their own bill aimed at reducing additional duplicative government reports. The Reports Reduction Act of 2014 will eliminate or modify 67 unnecessary government reports.
“Eliminating or modifying these outdated and often useless reports is a simple but effective step towards cutting waste and improving efficiency in the federal government,” Warner said, in a release. “Hundreds of federal employees spend countless hours producing mountains of these reports each year, and in many cases no one ever reads or even refers to those reports. Surely these agency resources could be targeted to smarter, more productive efforts that will actually provide more direct benefit to customers and taxpayers. Getting rid of 50 unnecessary reports is a solid start, but we can and should go even further, and I am pleased Sen. Ayotte and I will partner together once again to take aim at an additional 67 federal reports produced each year.”
In the same release, Ayotte called the elimination of the 50 government reports “a positive first step toward making government smaller and smarter.”
The Presidential and Federal Records Act Amendments of 2014 (H.R. 1233) passed unanimously on a voice vote. It aims to improve public access to records of the President and their advisers. Currently, the President can restrict access to his or her records for up to 12 years after they leave the Oval Office, and can continue to block publication of records based on a claim of executive privilege.
H.R. 1233 would maintain that 12-year period, but it would establish a precedent that presidential records be disclosed after that time passes. The bill establishes the procedures the Archivist of the United States will use to make records public. These include informing the public, the sitting President, and the President during whose term the record was created, that the record will be made publicly available. The record should be released within 60 days of that notification. The bill outlines steps the Archivist should take if the President claims a constitutionally-based privilege against disclosure of the record.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) introduced H.R. 1233 in March 2013 and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform amended it. The House passed the bill in January 2014. The Senate passed the bill with an amendment on Sept. 10. Supporters of the bill include the Government Accountability Project and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Both H.R. 4194 and H.R. 1233 were considered under suspension of the rules, a procedure that caps debate at 40 minutes and prohibits further amendments. Rules are typically suspended for bills that are uncontroversial and enjoy wide support. They now head to President Barack Obama for his signature.
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs also approved on Wednesday two significant DHS nominations: Russell Deyo for under secretary for management, and Sarah Saldaña for assistant secretary for immigration and customs enforcement.
Subscribe to Federal News Network's newsletters and be first to know the most important issues facing federal managers and government agencies.
The two nominees were ordered reported favorably by voice vote en bloc in the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Saldaña has been a U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas for three years, and previously served as the Deputy Criminal Chief for the Fraud and Public Corruption section in that office. Chairman Tom Carper (D-Del.) said ICE has gone too long without a presidentially-appointed leader considering the current border crisis.
Deyo worked in the private sector at Johnson & Johnson for 27 years. Carper said Deyo’s management perspective will help fuse the 22 agencies of the DHS.
The nominations now move to the Senate floor.
Senate bill would combine, eliminate 300-plus federal reports
Copyright © 2019 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
All News Congress Congress Darrell Issa Department of Homeland Security Elijah Cummings Hearings/Oversight House of Representatives Kelly Ayotte Legislation Mark Warner Russell Deyo Senate Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Tom Carper
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Why Chegg Should Be on Your Radar
Motley Fool Staff, The Motley Fool
Motley Fool February 14, 2019
If you aren't in college -- or the parent of an undergrad -- you may never have heard of Chegg (NYSE: CHGG). But if you fit into either of those demographics, the education technology company is on your side: Originally just a seller of textbooks, it pivoted its model to renting them some years back, and now also offers tutoring, e-books, and help with landing grants and loans, among other things.
In short, it's trying to cut down on the rising costs of higher education, and based on its most recent results, it's doing a good job. In this segment from MarketFoolery, host Mac Greer and senior analysts Andy Cross and Jason Moser talk about Chegg's business model, the risks if Amazon decides to challenge it, and more.
A full transcript follows the video.
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This video was recorded on Feb. 12, 2019.
Mac Greer: Let's close with a story about a company name Chegg. Jason, I didn't even know about this company. I'd never heard the name. That's part of what makes life interesting. Discovery is the spice of life, or, it's one of the spices. Chegg is an education technology company that offers online textbook rentals, homework help, online tutoring, scholarships, internship matching, and the like. Chegg shares up around 9% today on earnings. This is not a small company. This is between $4 [billion] and $5 billion.
Jason Moser: Speaking of spices, let's talk a little bit about McCormick, Mac, because that's really a business that's -- Just kidding, everybody! All right, Chegg. This is a company I've covered for a number of years. I started following it back in 2014 because it was interesting to me from a parent's perspective. Having gone to college, I saw what they were doing. The basic business back then was selling college textbooks to students, and then they got into the business of renting college textbooks to students, physical books. What really struck me, the damning chart for the case for this business, was the absurd increase in the price of college textbooks through the years. You go back to the mid-'70s, the prices on college textbooks were outpacing medical services, new home prices, even the CPI. If you think about it, that's extremely backwards. When you're a student, you don't have a whole heck of a lot to put on the line, and we're trying to educate our young population to be able to go do more things. We can't put them behind the eight ball by making it so they can't even afford their books.
What they did -- and really, I give all of the applause here to CEO Dan Rosensweig -- was basically pivoting this business to a digital business. Instead of being physical books, let's start going beyond books, let's develop a network, a full-on offering of all sorts of different services, from digital books to tutoring services, you name it, their Chegg Services business has it. Now, they're bringing on students beyond college students, we're talking about middle school and high school students, bringing them into that network. They educate people on how to pursue student loans, grants, things like that to get into college. To me, it's an example of a business that saw a lot of inefficiencies in a very important demographic in students and decided to try to eliminate as much of those inefficiencies as possible and return a lot of value.
With all that said, my one real concern with this business, because they make most of their money through that Chegg Services, which is subscriptions, students aren't known for having a whole heck of a lot of money, so the pricing power on that subscription may be a little bit questionable. And, the stock is not cheap. It's not like it's a profitable business. It's trading at like 100 times cash flow. Take that for what it's worth.
But this was a $6 stock five years ago, Mac. It's closing in on $40 now. Hats off to Dan for really turning this business around.
Greer: Do you think five years from now, they're still chugging along?
Andy Cross: Come on!
Greer: That was too easy. Or, do you think they get acquired by someone like Amazon? When I first read about this company, my first big question is, what keeps Amazon from going into that space and gobbling it up?
Moser: If you remember, Amazon got a little bit into the student book side of things. Barnes & Noble always was a player in that. I think therein lies the importance of Chegg diversifying their business beyond just books and really offering educational services, tutoring and whatnot. I really thought Amazon would be a natural acquirer for a business like this a time ago because it was a lot cheaper. To me, it seemed like a great way to get immediate access to an up-and-coming generation of Prime members who would be developing a relationship with Amazon at a younger age. That could still happen. I don't know. But it sure does seem like they're doing just fine on their own.
John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Andy Cross has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Jason Moser owns shares of AMZN and MKC. Mac Greer owns shares of AMZN. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends AMZN. The Motley Fool recommends MKC. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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New Faces: Philosophy welcomes two new professors
Rachael StubbertArts and Humanities, Faculty and Staff, New Faces, PhilosophyAldea Mulhern, Amine Tais, College of Arts and Humanities, New Faces, PhilosophyLeave a comment
The College of Arts and Humanities at Fresno State is the largest college on campus, encompassing nine departments, and the Armenian Studies Program.
Each year, new faculty are brought on to elevate the academic offerings here at Fresno State. These new faculty members bring innovative research, diverse fields of study and technical expertise to our college, inspiring new ways of thinking throughout our many disciplines.
Over the next few weeks, we will introduce you to these new faces, by department.
Dr. Amine Tais joins the Department of Philosophy as a tenure-track faculty after completing his Ph.D. at Georgetown University in Washington D.C.
He also holds a master’s degree from the University of Washington. Tais’ primary teaching area is comparative religion (Western traditions) with a particular focus on Islam and his research interests include Islamic intellectual history, reform movements, secularism and religion, scripture and interpretation, as well as religious extremism and violence.
Question: What are you most looking forward to here at Fresno State?
Answer: I am very excited about the opportunity to participate in enriching the learning experience of our students by helping them navigate the worlds of religion. I’m also looking forward to building a solid religion program alongside my colleagues in the Philosophy Department.
Q: Can you tell us how you became involved in your specialty area?
A: At one point in my life, I became very interested in the question of why individuals or groups claim religious commitment to be a driving force in their decision to commit acts of violence. I decided to rejoin the ranks of higher education and study religion academically.
Q: What will your distinctive background do to elevate the Philosophy Department offerings here at Fresno State?
A: Issues surrounding Islam and Muslims are among the most pressing in our country and all over the world. I hope that my expertise will help raise the level of our public discourse about these issues beyond polemics and apologetics, that is beyond simply attacking or defending something we term “Islam” and instead have a robust understanding of the historical, social, political, economic and cultural elements that have shaped the development of Islam as a religious tradition and the diverse lives of people that we collectively call Muslims.
Q: What is a book you think everyone should read?
A: For a short, but scholarly and critically engaged introduction to Islam, I suggest a book titled “Rethinking Islam: Common Questions, Uncommon Answers by Mohammed Arkoun.”
Q: What’s a fun fact people might not know about you?
A: I love sports. I have played soccer throughout my life at competitive levels. I support the Seattle teams, particularly the Seahawks of the NFL. I hope Seattle gets the Sonics back at some point in the near future. Internationally, I’m a big fan of FC Barcelona.
Q: When are your office hours?
A: My office hours for Fall 2018 are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10 to 11:30 or by appointment.
Q: Anything else you’d like to share?
A: Go ‘Dogs!
Dr. Aldea Mulhern joins the Department of Philosophy with an emphasis in areas related to method and theory in religious studies. She specializes in theory of comparison and field research methods, but her interests range widely and she can often be found teaching about Judaism and Islam, or even Christianity or Hinduism, in contrast with Santeria, Vodou, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and even the Vegetarian/Vegan vs. Omnivore debate.
Mulhern comes to Fresno State from Grand Valley State University, where she was Visiting Assistant Professor of Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Communication. Her anthropological field research includes work on North American Jews and Muslims who are active in the Food Movement, and her article “What does it mean to ‘eat Jewishly’” explores foodways developing on the largest Jewish farm in North America.
Mulhern holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Toronto, Canada, and an MA in Religion and Culture from Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. Her BA from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is a semi-conservatory acting degree, which involved mounting theatrical productions in place of a traditional thesis. In her spare time, Aldea consumes YouTube voraciously. Her current top channels include Crash Course, Extra Credits, and Comedy Central. She is also cooking up courses on Judaism (Introducing Judaism Through Food) and on Pigs (tentatively, The Problem of The Pig in Global Cultures).
Question: Can you tell us how you became involved in your specialty area?
Answer: I was in a Ph.D. program in the Study of Religion, poking around in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, showing up at all these Food Movement events and trying to find out what the religious participation in the movement was all about. I kept seeing people from these two organizations, one Jewish and one Muslim, that were always showing up. They were really interesting. I ended up conducting field research simultaneously with both organizations! Everything else flowed from there.
A: I’m not a proper, trained philosopher: really I’m more a philosophy fan. I’m honored to work alongside my philosopher colleagues and I’m handy to have around because I’m formally trained as a Religious Studies person (MA and Ph.D.). I use mixed methods, predominantly anthropological research techniques and major theories from the well-established field of religious studies and the emerging field of food studies, to understand features of contemporary religious life. I’m super interested in everyday, lived religion, in the form of practice and bodies and foodways, particularly in religiously diverse contexts.
Q: What sort of thing are you doing to prepare?
A: Talking to people! I’ve been wanting to find out more about who lives, plays, works, and studies here. Arts and Humanities scholarship is, I think, often very connected to its time, place and community, and this is especially true of the educational part of scholarship. So I design my courses in a kind of dialectical process — balancing what is crucial, classical, and new in the field on the one hand and what people who take a course know, care about, and need to hear about on the other.
A: Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn by Karen McCarthy Brown. Not only will it teach you about a widely-misunderstood religious tradition; it combines fictionalized narrative and ethnographic analysis, which are fairly different modes of writing. It’s an amazing book- every time I read it, I can never put it down.
A: I’m from east-coast Canada, so I speak English and French and I love poutine! Which has to have real cheese curds. Also, I can say the alphabet backward really fast. My current goal is to learn Spanish, now that I live here in Fresno. ¡Hola, mucho gusto!
A: This fall my office hours are MW 3:30-4:30 and W 11-12, and other times can be set up as well- just email me! In the spring they’ll change, but I’ll post an update on my office door, on the main floor of the Music Building (Philosophy Department).
A: One thing I always like to share: a cup of tea, a snack, and an elaborate conversation! More to the point, though, I’m currently teaching Religion and the Margin and Contemporary Moral Conflicts and in the spring I’ll be teaching Religion and the Margin and Comparative Religion. And who knows what’ll be on deck for next year. I’d love to see you in class!
Department of Art and Design, Center for Creativity and the Arts host photographer Tomiko Jones
CAH Investigates: Kelsey Heater and the ‘Couchmen’ uniform
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News: HighTide announce Disruption season at Assembly Roxy
After the success of their 2018 HighTide: Edinburgh programme, HighTide have now partnered with Assembly to present Disruption, their programme of contemporary new writing exclusively at Assembly Roxy. The six pieces chosen demonstrate HighTide and Assembly Festival’s shared vision for new writing as a space of political, contemporary and provocative work, created by new, diverse artists. HighTide is renowned for the discovery of new playwrights, including Ella Hickson, Nick Payne and Vinay Patel, and the Disruption season sees HighTide writers premiere at the world’s largest arts festival ahead of performances at HighTide Festivals Aldeburgh and Walthamstow.
From HighTide’s home county, East Anglian writer Kenny Emson’s Rust is the centrepiece of HighTide’s programme, following performances at London’s Bush Theatre who co-produce the production. Also headlining will be Collapsible by Irish writer Margaret Perry, Pops which sees Charlotte Josephine return to Edinburgh with her first piece solely as a writer and a double bill of shows presented with The Queer House from writers Teddy Lamb and Mia Johnson. Finally, demonstrating Assembly’s commitment to supporting Scottish new writing, Kevin P. Gilday’s Suffering From Scottishness completes the curated programme.
Disruption references the type of shows in the season, and the approach to producing them through an open call. Disruption shows HighTide’s continued commitment to supporting exciting theatre makers and providing them with the very best platform to be heard.
Steven Atkinson, Artistic Director of HighTide, commented: “I am thrilled to be concluding my Artistic Directorship of HighTide by championing this outstanding group of six bold new artists; Kenny Emson, Kevin P. Gilday, Mia Johnson, Charlotte Josephine, Teddy Lamb and Margaret Perry. We’re collaborating with our partners Bush Theatre, Ellie Keel Productions, Live Theatre, Jake Orr Productions, The Queer House and Sonnet Youth to present a unique programme of ambitious new writing at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2019 as part of Disruption at Assembly Roxy.”
Artistic Director Assembly Festival, William Burdett-Coutts added: “We are delighted to be partnering with HighTide to present this programme of contemporary work during the Festival. Assembly recognises the value of showcasing new work in Edinburgh in August, and we hope that our support will ensure that these contemporary theatre makers are given the best platform to present their work to the world’s media, and the hundreds of thousands of people who come here to enjoy the best arts festival in the world.”
In addition to the six productions, Disruption will feature a programme of events throughout the month in keeping with the season’s commitment to contemporary and provocative work. These additional events will be announced at a later date.
Rust is about pushing the boundaries of trust, love and lust to the limit in this ultra-contemporary, sexy and funny production from Kenny Emson (Plastic, Old Red Lion) and directed by Eleanor Rhode (King John, Royal Shakespeare Company, Boudica, Shakespeare’s Globe). Nadia and Daniel have just signed for a flat. Under a pseudonym, naturally. After years of married life, this is their chance to start again. But, as much as they redefine the rules, the outside world is closing in. Rust is a love story about two people who didn’t expect to fall in love again. It’s about the societal pressures that can sometimes trap us, preventing us from chancing something or someone new.
Collapsible (winner of VAULT Festival 2019’s Origin Award for Outstanding New Work) is a funny, furious new monologue about holding on in this collapsing world, by award-winning Irish writer Margaret Perry (Porcelain, Abbey Theatre), directed by Thomas Martin (Ross and Rachel). Following the life of a complex, funny bisexual woman, it looks at the difficulties of finding connections to people when you don’t feel connected to yourself. Blending a fearless, psychologically acute female performance with a set intervention that appears to float the performer in the air, we see that the protagonist, despite everyone’s protestations, quite literally doesn’t have her feet on the ground.
Margaret Perry commented: “This is a story about work, identity and trying to wade out of the dark, inspired by a period in my life when I was unemployed and began to stop feeling like a person. The story of a young queer woman who starts to lose track of where she stops and the world starts, I wrote this play for anyone who’s ever felt crumbly.”
Pops from award-winning writer Charlotte Josephine (Bitch Boxer, Blush), directed by Ali Pidsley of Barrel Organ, and co-produced by Live Theatre, follows a father and daughter caught in a cycle of addiction. Despite everything, they’re really trying to honestly connect, forgive the unforgivable and love fiercely through a hopeless situation. Asking challenging questions about mental health, Pops looks at what is inherited and who is responsible, particularly in this harsh political climate. There are stubborn stigmas around mental health, particularly for the working class, and Pops seeks to tell a story that rids people of self-inflicted shame.
Charlotte Josephine said: “The cruelness of austerity is, of course, that it damages those who need the most support. The tabloids enjoy spreading lies that addiction is a choice, an ignorance, a greedy self-indulgence. It’s hard to get well when the national narrative is repeatedly insisting you’re bad, not sick. Shame is a killer, and the antidote to shame is empathy. Story telling is empathy making, and there’s no better art form for story telling than live theatre. We need it, now more than ever.”
An exciting double bill between HighTide and The Queer House sees Since U Been Gone by Teddy Lamb and Mia Johnson’s Pink Lemonade alternate performances every day. Lamb’s moving autobiographical account of growing up queer in the East Midlands, finding yourself, and losing a friend is brought to life in Since U Been Gone with storytelling and an original pop music score. Johnson’s Pink Lemonade is a multi-disciplinary solo show, exploring masculinity and lesbianism in Black womxn. Fusing spoken word, bashment, original sound and movement, Pink Lemonade deconstructs micro-aggressions and explores the discourse around the fetishism of Black and Brown bodies.
An immersive theatrical experience that confronts the unique absurdity of Scottish identity, Suffering From Scottishness from award-winning writer and spoken word artist Kevin P. Gilday (Sonnet Youth, National Theatre of Scotland, BBC) turns a hilariously caustic eye on notions of nationhood and patriotism. From history to inventions, language to neighbourly relations, the Scottish independence referendum to the toxic mire of present political debate – Citizen Scotland invite audiences to take part in a focus group that will define the very future of the nation, for better or worse as they gleefully dissect the dark heart of the country.
The shows by Kenny Emson, Margaret Perry, Charlotte Josephine, Teddy Lamb and Mia Johnson will headline HighTide’s festivals in Aldeburgh (10 – 15 September) and Walthamstow (17 – 22 September) which will go on sale on 30 May 2019.
For more information visit http://www.assemblyfestival.com
Photo credit: Jassy Earl
Assembly Roxy, Disruption, HighTide, New Writing, theatre
News: The Wardrobe Ensemble’s hit comedy Education, Education, Education transfers to the West End
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Image: Anderson Plumbing, Heating & Air
A San Diego HVAC Firm Goes Back to School to Solve the Labor Shortage
by Kris Carber | Apr. 18, 2019
Donald B. StephensFacilities and strategic vendor manager, Jacobs
Seth DunnDirector of industry development, power & utilities, ServiceMax
Daniel BrabecDirector of global customer transformation, ServiceMax
It isn’t often that companies turn to the classroom to solve a labor shortage, but that’s what Anderson Plumbing, Heating & Air in San Diego, Calif., has done. Facing a shortage of skilled workers, the San Diego-based company’s leaders determined that if they couldn’t find skilled workers, they would train them. Two years ago, the company founded Anderson Career Builders Institute (ACBI), a state-and privately funded trade school for the HVAC and plumbing industry. The 18-month program allows recruits to earn an income and gain workplace experience while attending classes.
The shortfall of technicians isn’t new — only 6 percent of U.S. workers enter the trades, according to Alyssa Slater, HR liaison for ACBI — but as service demands increase and older workers retire, the situation has become critical.
Mary Jean Anderson, who owns Anderson Plumbing, Heating & Air, founded the institute with a class of 12 in January 2017. Since then the school has graduated 28 people, including five women and six military veterans, ranging in age from 25 to 50.
Students in the Anderson Career Builders Institute program. Image: Anderson Plumbing, Heating & Air
Many students are pursuing a career change, Slater says. “One recruit was a bus driver, another was a maintenance technician. We had one student who worked in water filtration at the San Diego Zoo. We’ve also had students right out of high school but if they are over 30, they are usually in a career change.”
SEE ALSO: HVAC Boot Camp: One Firm’s Proactive Answer to the Talent Crunch
While the 18-month school is privately funded by Anderson, the company secured a state grant in March 2018 that allowed them to start a 90-day pre-apprentice program. No experience is required for the pre-apprenticeship and students are paid minimum wage while learning, which consists of eight hours of technical skills and two hours of interpersonal skills per week followed by field work alongside an experienced technician.
On completion of the pre-apprentice program, students transition to a 12- or 18-month program at ACBI, depending on what they want to study. (HVAC certification takes 12 months, while plumbing and repair certification takes 18 months.) Once they graduate, participants will have achieved a level of expertise that prepares them for an entry-level technician position. The typical path of a recruit is to start at a maintenance-level job, where duties might include replacing water heaters or running gas lines, and work up to higher levels as their experience progresses.
We’ve had to push off growth because we couldn’t find people. We give our recruits paid training and work experience. In return, we ask that they give us a five-year commitment to the industry and, hopefully, to Anderson Plumbing. — Mary Jean Anderson, owner, Anderson Plumbing, Heating & Air
Anderson’s husband, Bryan Rominger, who has more than 30 years of experience in the plumbing industry, designed the curriculum with a focus on residential applications. Since opening the institute, he has expanded the classes to include plumbing maintenance, drains and HVAC maintenance. Students receive two days of classroom and lab instruction per week, and spend three days in the field working alongside technicians.
Slater, ACBI’s HR liaison, was hired last year to manage enrollment, recruitment and grants. “Early on we ran online ads and attended job fairs but now the majority of students are referred by word of mouth.” She says they often have up to 140 applicants for less than 20 slots, and they rarely run ads.
The hire rate is also exceptional, with some 90 percent of graduates placed in industry positions. Anderson recently added 18 graduates to its workforce, which has allowed them to expand smaller departments, such as drain maintenance.
“We’ve had to push off growth because we couldn’t find people. We give our recruits paid training and work experience. In return, we ask that they give us a five-year commitment to the industry and, hopefully, to Anderson Plumbing,” she says.
Though Anderson founded the school to ease her own company’s labor shortfall, other HVAC professionals have visited the institute in hopes of starting a school or possibly collaborating with ACBI. Six HVAC/plumbing companies have asked if they could send recruits through training, and several companies have recruited graduates who aren’t hired by Anderson.
As for what they’ve learned since founding the institute, “not to limit recruiting,” Slater says. “We’ve learned to be picky. When the school opened, we marketed the program through social media, also making a pitch to job seekers at career fairs, women’s centers and veterans’ organizations. Once we stopped restricting where we recruited, our applications soared.”
“We’re working towards solving the labor shortage but we haven’t resolved it yet,” she adds. “A lot of our workers are reaching retirement and it takes time for ‘greens’ to catch up. The school is one path that could lead us towards a solution.”
About Kris Carber
Kris Carber has been writing about field service management and location technology for nearly a decade.
View all posts by Kris Carber
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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > No Music Discussion > Country, Folk, Acoustic, and Alt-Country: More Than Just Johnny Cash
WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
IF YOU SEE ME POSTING OUTSIDE OF THE AUSPOL THREAD PLEASE TELL ME THAT I'M MISSED AND TO START POSTING AGAIN
Looks like there isn't a thread for music made by people strumming guitars or barnstorming through songs about hard luck and bad love, so I figured I'd make one.
I'm missing a show tonight by Canada's Corb Lund, who's a great stompy country artist. Last time I saw him he was opening for The Waifs, probably Australia's best mid level country/folk act. Check out 'Bridal Train', probably their best song.
This Sunday I'm seeing Hayes Carll, a criminally underrated Texan with some of the cleverest lyrics I've heard in a long time. I was reading one of those stupid Slate year-end roundups and they quoted the best bit:
Hayes Carll’s fourth album, KMAG YOYO (and other American stories), has plenty of the n’e’er-do-well road rockers, drinking songs and lovelorn ballads, but he brings unusual vim, wit and an of-the-moment lefty political edge. The title track (from the military-slang acronym for “Kiss my rear end, guys, you’re on your own”) takes the template of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and overlays a shaggy-dog story about an unwilling Afghan-war recruit who ends up on a drugged-up and ill-starred covert op: “I won't ever ask you, Lord, for anything again/ I'll swear it on the Bible, Torah or Koran/ Lyin' in a rhino track/ 'Bout to have a heart attack/ IED got to me, someone call the Medevac …”
Better yet is the even-less-programmatic, “Another Like You,” in which Carll and guest vocalist Cary Ann Hearst duet with Johnny-and-June or Conway-and-Loretta gusto on a back-and-forth of ribald barroom banter and slander (“You’re probably a Democrat” “What the hell is wrong with that?” “Nothing, if you’re Taliban” and “Were you hitting on the stripper ’cuz you can’t afford to tip her, or just afraid of being alone?”) that winds up inevitably in room 402 (“well, I gotta hand it to ya, there’s a chance I’m going to screw ya”) for a snowball’s chance in hell at lasting love.
I've also been getting into some of the real stuff, like George Jones and Waylon Jennings and Townes Van Zandt. Speaking of, Steve Earle's kid Justin Townes Earle is fantastic and is well worth seeing.
dk2m
I have developed a love for ambient country or whatever the hell it's called. Basically, I should feel like a loner walking through the desert of Arizona with my horse named Apache and a bad attitude. Ry Cooder's Paris, Texas soundtrack, some of Sumner McKane's work (even though he tends to go the more post-rock route), Daniel Lanois' soundtrack to Sling Blade are just some examples. Something about the sparseness of the twangy, reverbed out guitar and the beautiful slide guitar sound just sends chills up my spine.
Are there any other albums or artists worth checking out that fit this bill?
dk2m fucked around with this message at Aug 22, 2012 around 03:56
Calexico are the big ones. You'll also want the Red Dead Redemption soundtrack.
me your dad
dk2m posted:
There was another person asking for something similar in another thread a while back, and I suggested Friends of Dean Martinez, who I think perfectly fit that bill.
I've been listening to a good amount of Gram Parsons recently, and he's my main goto in country music. I love the "hungover and drinking whisky in the morning" sound in country.
Have some good country songs by Ween:
I Got No Darkside
So Long, Jerry
Help Me Scrape the Mucous Off My Brain
Happy Hippo
The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Batman's Shameful Secret > BSS Derailed Thread: Spider-Island
Funny you should mention Justin Townes Earle, OP. I just met him the other day.
Everyone go check out the first three Son Volt records right now. They are masterpieces of American music, god drat it.
Ambitious Spider
Lipstick Apathy
folky-country-bluesy-americana-Alt-countryish music might be my favorite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy3WkIfgkSQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs6rgjWZXyQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bimam2j2gEg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le-3MIBxQTw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIa3QTp34Sw
and two of my favorites together:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q29LbH1JZZc
I'm not sure why I didn't mention Lucero or Drive-By Truckers in the OP. They're two of the best Southern rock bands around, though Drive-By Truckers are better. All their albums are a bit overstuffed, since they've got about 4 songwriters. But they're all good, and they go beyond the usual love and heartbreak songs. Southern Rock Opera, which is exactly what it says, is their masterpiece. 'Let There Be Rock' is amazing.
One of DBTs best songwriters, Jason Isbell (he wrote the heartbreaking 'Danko Manuel') recently went solo. His stuff is well-worth checking out.
Eileen Jewel is pretty new. She opened for Lucinda Williams and easily held her own.
Count Chocula posted:
I just started getting into DBT. I've only heard Brighter than creation's dark so far.They have quite the discography and I haven't felt this overwhelmed getting into a band since I started listening to Tom Waits.
RadioactiveKid
Gato Rebelde
Reckless Kelly is a cool band that ive been listening to alot lately. They have a pretty good mix of country/rock in their sound, and ive been listening to them alot latly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRaYABbjbtM
Sometimes I'm more in the mood for more traditional Honky Tonk sounding music, and Aaron Watson is what I listen to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfSf3ro0-oY
Ambitious Spider posted:
I would start with "Decoration Day" then "The Dirty South". Those two records are flawless victories.
theblackw0lf
"...creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature"
Is Justin's middle named "Townes" named after the late great Townes Van Zandt?
edit: oh duh, just re-read your post and that's why you mentioned him.
theblackw0lf fucked around with this message at Aug 24, 2012 around 06:18
Conduit for Sale!
You might want to check out A Small Good Thing. They're very ambient and often veer into straight up ambient electronic, but for the most part their music sounds like it could be a soundtrack to a western. Which is what I look for in ambient country or whatever.
I'd recommend the album Slim Westerns. I can only find 2 tracks from them on Youtube, one is pretty ambient and not much country, the other isn't from Slim Westerns. But whatever!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NX5smbZ8Bo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwMfa-Bj6og
You might also like the album A Stable Reference by Labradford. Again, they're not strictly ambient western but they still have that same sort of sound as A Small Good Thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCNnS5DtjBc
Now listen to this because it's the best ambient western (okay maybe it's not that ambient) song I've heard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShUc6gto4sQ
I'm probably biased because No Country for Old Men is my favorite movie of all time and probably my favorite anything ever, and that song comes after an hour and 55 minutes of almost no music what so ever. It's just a perfect song to end the movie with.
Junkenstein
Do you see?
Not sure if this is what you're after, but have you heard Earth's recent output?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb-3eBlv_qE
Blue Raider
Happy Hippo posted:
No joke. "The Dirty South" especially is one of the strongest overall records I've ever heard. I never cared for their pre-"Southern Rock Opera" stuff, but some songs like "Steve McQueen" are a lot of fun.
Lumius
Superior Awesome Sucks
Stan Rogers from the east coast of canada somwhere was ok, He was a folk player I guess in the vein of Gordon lightfoot. He has a great deep voice, Guysborough Train https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJiLADHFZd4 is probably my favourite song of his . I wrote an essay on him but I don't even remember the topic ha.
MourningView
Is this Heaven?
Decoration Day might be my favorite DBT album, but I think Southern Rock Opera is the easiest way to get into them (if you ignore the spoken word stuff) and it has a bunch of their most popular live songs (see them live if you get a chance by the way). It's pretty hard to go wrong with anything from that stretch though. Everything from there is a little more hit or miss, but anything post SRO is worth checking out. As mentioned the stuff prior to that isn't on the same level, although there are a few gems like "The Living Bubba".
Trace is a legit classic, everything else...eh.
MourningView fucked around with this message at Aug 25, 2012 around 19:45
That Guy From Pearldiver
President and Sole Member of the Andre Braugher Appreciation Society
After everyone checks out the last two Uncle Tupelo records first you mean. Good music that documents that Jeff Tweedy did exist outside his own rear end at one point.
Hayes Carll was fantastic last night; if you get a chance see him. Just unforced charm and humor; I'm still laughing at 'Boy you ain't a poet you're just a drunk with a pen'. Here's KMAG YOYO, my favorite talking blues song about going into space on LSD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElnaO3WQkZc
Anyone else a fan of Old Crow Medicine show? They're kinda bluegrassy and put on amazing live shows. I've heard good things about the new American Aquarium album.
RaoulDuke
I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.
Never been able to get into DBT which is weird since I love that sorta music.
Lucero is one of my favorite bands who continues to put out great albums and perform fun live shows despite signing to universal. Maybe one or two bad songs in their whole catalog. I encourage everyone to check out their frontman Ben Nichols' solo album about Cormac McCarty's Blood Meridian as well as the other artists from the revival tour (Austin Lucas, Chuck Ragan etc.)
My favorite folk band at the moment is probably Frontier Ruckus. Wonderfully cryptic and literary lyrics with badass folksy instrumentation. (please listen till the end of below song!!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIGvBtFwDJ4
Listening to Drag the River lately. 'Alt-country' in the vein of Sun Volt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMcD54kRD4g
James McMurtry Leans more towards traditional country-rock. Fairly Political. Son of Larry McMurtry of Lonesome Dove fame.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbWRfBZY-ng
Magnolia Electric Company I don't know if would be called country per se but might as well be and are great songwriters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gBaolYCbyE
The Mountain Goats might be outside the country spectrum as well though his story telling lyrics are certainly in the vein of older country singer. Of modern 'singer-songerwriters' he is, in my opinion, the best
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-xxeSRHuso
Was recently introduced to a band named Arliss Nancy who is signed to Denver's great Suburban home records. Slightly more punk. Similar to Lucero.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGZzNVUaYVc
Then there's the classics starting with Hank Sr. Ramblin' Jack Elliot (helped Rolling Stones get their start in american country blues) Townes, John Prine, Cash of course, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger,
Slobberbone, Chris Knight, Felice Brothers, Frank Turner, The lost trailer's first album, Ryan Bingham, Heartless Bastards, Avett Brothers (not their newest album), Hackensaw Boys, King Wilkie and Crow are worth checking out too if you're so inclined, the last three being more bluegrassish.
Kinda separate, but if you are into folk, folk-punk is a genre worth checking out. Either the bands on the Wiki page or most any Defiance, Ohio record is a good intro.
Jealous of all you who saw Hayes Carll...
Mexcillent
Just saw the Old '97s play all of Too Far To Care last night. It was pretty much one of the greatest experiences of my young life.
They've had a run of pretty so-so albums, but Hitchike to Rhome, Too Far To Care, and Wreck Your Life are superb.
This song was the highlight of the night
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG2MBf5pL0E
Mexcillent posted:
Gonna see this on Thursday night, I'm pretty pumped. I like the stuff that came after that album a lot more than I think most Old 97's fans do, but it's still my favorite.
I DIDN'T GET ENOUGH RAPE LAST TIME, MAY I HAVE SOME MORE?
Being from Texas, I have a soft spot for country by default.
I see everyone's already posted Lucero, so I'm just gonna throw some stuff out there and see what sticks, and if you don't like it that's okay because I got a gift receipt so you can just take it back and get whatever, like with that sweater grandma got you last Christmas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LASeB3628v8
Austin Lucas - Go West. This is the song that got me into him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgd-tkjxQ94
Goddamn Cross Canadian Ragweed. Everyone should know this song by heart.
Turns out they're not from Canada.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8PmwN-cVf4
More Cross Canadian Ragweed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_13K_-Wa7aQ
Bart Crow - Saw these guys at a lovely country bar and had this song stuck in my head for a month afterward. Was also real drunk. Country is drinking music.
Turns out I worked a local music festival for a small (think sub 1800 population) town and these guys were there. Got to hang out with them some but there was free beer because I volunteered to work and I don't remember a lot of it.
And I'll end with some...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJWnIFlYKjs
Pat Green. Song was HUGE, at least in Texas.
e:NSFW Comedy Option - The Rodeo Song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5JSUUTO_9I
invision fucked around with this message at Aug 30, 2012 around 00:54
Everyone here wishes I would ragequit my life
My favorite band of this general type of music is The Silent Comedy. They mix a LOT of genres but it's usually centered around some kind of folkish tune. Bartholomew is by far their most popular song, but it's more rock than most of their work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoP5NGLsWR0
All Saints Day gives you a good sense of their range:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQJCi4RVFZ8
An amazing live performance in a wine cellar with sick acoustics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3Vm7UfVgXo
All acoustic jam session with real washboard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pet-frXJtAs
Industrial fucked around with this message at Aug 30, 2012 around 02:26
Rogue1-and-a-half
You can't beat Kristofferson, back in the day. Those early records were pure gold, man. Still are. Silver Tongued Devil, Sunday Morning Comin' Down, etc.
Somewhat more modern than that I'd recommend the Yayhoos (The Bottle and the Bible has kind of become a lo-fi standard, if there is such a thing) and the Electric Waco Brothers have put out some good albums. Electric Waco Chair is kind of a masterpiece.
Going a much poppier direction, there's some good stuff in George Strait's catalog, though he's about three times as glossy as anybody else mentioned in this thread. And Josh Turner's a new pop-country guy that I like a lot. His first album, Long Black Train, is a straight up solid pop-country album. Occasionally, as on I Had One One Time, it's quite a bit more. He can hit that perfect country weeper sweet spot when he wants to.
Then there's Evan Dando. I really never liked The Lemonheads, but Dando put out this one really great solo album called Baby I'm Bored. It's pretty folky and he's got a great way with aching melodies. Here's Why Do You Do This To Yourself?, which sounds like something Hank Williams could have recorded.
Just so we're all clear, all this exploration should be after you've listened to Hank Williams extensively, okay? I mean, get Hank's 40 Greatest Hits, this old compilation album from the late seventies before you pass go, if you're interested in country. I mean, that's still the gold standard.
McMadCow
With our rifles and grenades and some help from God.
Justin Townes Earle performing "Harlem River Blues" on Letterman a while back:
http://youtu.be/5LLqFF89UtU
And he has Jason Isbell from DBT backing him on electric guitar. I don't know if they ever really did a proper tour together, though. When I saw him he was doing his 3-piece with a fiddler and the bassist in this video.
McMadCow posted:
They toured together in Australia a few years back. I thought Jason blew Justin away. Had a drink with them after; nice guys. Jason Isbell never stops tweeting. I've seen JTE a few more times since then and he's really grown on me. 'Midnight At The Movies' is gorgeous.
RaolDuke, I haven't mentioned The Mountain Goats since once I start sperging about them I can't stop. I'll probably make a dedicated thread once the new album comes out. It's called 'Trancendental Youth' and looks set to continue John's focus on sin and redemption from the past few albums. He's the greatest modern songwriter.
I got into Old 97s after somebody told me Gaslight Anthem ripped them off. I wouldn't go that far but I do dig them.
Anyone heard William Elliot Whitmore? He's a real stompy country guy. I saw him open for Frank Turner (who's basically a folk singer, though he plays at punk) and he did the closing song for Red Dead Redemption. Tim Barry's another ex-punk, now country guy who's good. Real hobos and freight trains stuff.
Folk-punk's my favorite genre, but it covers so much territory. Like Raol said, start with Defiance, Ohio. All their albums are free on their site. Then check out Andrew Jackson Jihad, Bomb The Music Industry, Johnny Hobo and the Freight Trains, The Smith Street Band, The Menzingers, Against Me!, etc. The Horroble Crowes, Gaslight Anthem's folkier side project, is probably worth it too.
Kinda weird how much overlap there is between the two genres. Lucero opened for Dropkick Murphies, who are punk as gently caress but got huge recently covering a Woody Guthrie song.
Count Chocula fucked around with this message at Aug 30, 2012 around 22:28
Forgot about WEW. Song of the Blackbird is a loving amazing EP, like American spiritualism at its finest.
Dwight Yoakam just announced an Australian tour. Hadn't heard him before an hour ago and I'm literally tapping my feet at my desk. Honky Tonk Man, This Drinking Will Kill Me, Streets of Bakersfield... drat this is good stuff.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/nash...oduction,24585/ Big AV Club feature on classic country. I need it, since I grew up far away from it in the North.
BigFactory
Dwight Yoakam's great stuff, actually. There's no denying that he's doing contemporary country music, but his music just feels authentic, where a lot of pop country doesn't at all. His album "Gone" is really worth checking out.
WaywardWoodwose
BigFactory posted:
Dwight Yoakam is great because you can slip his albums in to a rockabilly playlist and none of your friends will know they're listening to country music.
And on the not completely country side, I really can't say enough about the Legendary Shack Shakers, or the Shakers side project, the Dirt Daubers. With one of the best frontmen I've ever seen and a lot of super high energy songs you won't get much more bang for your buck in a live venue. If you can find it, the singer J.D. produced a documentary a couple of years back called seven signs, and it features several other non-traditional country inspired acts, like the Pine Hill Haints, Slim Cessna Auto Club, and Scott Biram. Worth watching if you can find it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPHbhIsO5Ug
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs-Elft_EGQ
WaywardWoodwose fucked around with this message at Aug 31, 2012 around 15:27
funeral fag
The new Murder by Death album leaked and it is good. Not quite as great as Red of Tooth and Claw but a definite return to form after the slightly disappointing Good Morning Magpie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OySnO_JQ5QA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxgZoImxWz8
# ? Sep 1, 2012 07:58
Found these guys through the 'bands you've never heard of thread' last year. Australian horror country. Really good stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj6Q0xRW5bQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O4BnIW6dIM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f4_ccD3KkI
Guitars, cadillacs and hillbilly music/is the only thing that keeps me hangin' on. That's kind of Yoakam's manifesto. Like you say, he plays around a little with the smoother, more modern sound, but he still captures genuine emotion and those slicker moments just make him feel like an extension of the Bakersfield sound. He melds the old school vibe with the modern pop vibe in just the right way. People always tell me that I just don't like pop country. But it's not whether your not you've got pop in there with the country; it's do you actually have some real country in there with your pop. I find a lot of them just don't. But Yoakam does for sure.
Junkenstein posted:
Graveyard Train are so much fun; I've seen them about a dozen times. Haven't listened to much real Australian country besides Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson. Here's Rattlin Bones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD7ivs3anF0
Has anyone heard the new Patterson Hood solo album yet? Uncut loved it, and I can't imagine he'd suddenly turn bad after leaving the DBTs. I can't wait to pick it up. It comes out on 9/11, same day as Dylan's newest.
In the past 2 days I've listened to 70 Dwight Yoakam tracks (Spotify has his Rhino Records collection) and I'm not bored yet. I'm honestly surprised, since I haven't listened to much real country. Guess I'm going to spend $70 to see him with a bunch of bogans down from the bush.
Count Chocula fucked around with this message at Sep 3, 2012 around 04:33
Hood has not left the DBTs. Hell, this is his third solo record. Cooley has one in the works too. I haven't heard the album proper but I saw him live back in April and he played some tracks from it and they were pretty good.
Cooley has one in the works too.
This is extremely exciting.
Mr Wind Up Bird
i'm a goddamn coward
but then again so are you
I can't stop listening to First Aid Kit help they are in my dreams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC57z-oDPLs
I'm also pretty excited for the new Avett Brothers in a few weeks. I had a chance to see them live a while back and I missed it and I regret it a lot.
"I saw Minos the Space Judge holding a golden sceptre and passing sentence upon the Martians. There he presided, and around him the noble Space Prosecutors sought the firm justice of space law."
Hey, this is the thread for me!
American Aquarium is a great band from North Carolina, that just put out a new album Burn.Flicker.Die that is excellent. It was produced by Jason Isbell as well.
Most of it is streaming on their website
http://americanaquarium.net/
The Bible and the Bottle is also amazing.
Truckstop Darlin' is from Portland and I can't stop playing Hope and the Heart it Breaks. Doesn't exactly say Portland to me, but they are excellent.
They also stream the whole disc
http://truckstopdarlin.com/album/ho...it-breaks-2012/
Todd Farrell's EP is pretty good as well. Very Truckers-esque.
Streaming on bandcamp
http://toddfarrell.bandcamp.com/alb...oys-go-to-drink
From Alaska, Matthew Dean Herman is pretty cool. Also, fairly truckers-esque (not a bad thing), but obviously a bit more norther. I think you can stream from here:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/matthewdeanherman
He has a new project the Jack River kings who release an album this friday. Should be great
http://www.jackriverkings.com/
Noted Arliss Nancy has already been mentioned. They're pretty awesome.
Also, saw Cross Canadian Ragweed mentioned. If you like Red Dirt, John Moreland and whatever it is this week are pretty awesome.
He's got a bandcamp page where everything is streaming. If you like it, buy it, I think he's been struggling moneywise lately. Endless Oklahoma is a favorite of mine.
http://johnmoreland.bandcamp.com/
Goddamn, I can't believe I forgot Doc Dailey and the Magnolia Devil. This is really the best band no one has heard of. I only know about him because Isbell managed to drag him out to GAMH in San Francisco last year, and I haven't stopped listening since. He is everything that is right with Americana at the moment. He combines banjos and horns for god's sake and it works! And just an amazing voice.
Stream here:
http://docdaileyandmagnoliadevil.ba...ies-old-friends
Seven Points is probably my favorite song.
He has a new album coming out any day now.
nm fucked around with this message at Sep 4, 2012 around 05:40
m-o-o-n posted:
I've been listening to this yesterday and it's amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6k5BRwIPxk - The Handsome Family destroy every nerdcore and steampunk band with their haunting song about Tesla.
# ? Sep 28, 2012 04:02
Epi Lepi
You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants
If you don't listen to her already you should definitely try Neko Case. Not only is her solo stuff great but she's a member of The New Pornographers.
She has a gorgeous voice and her last album Middle Cyclone is just stellar. The only bad thing is that her last album came out in 2009. She has been working on a new one, but I have no idea when it's coming out. It feels like she's been talking about the recording of it on twitter for a year.
Here's her singing the lead off track from Middle Cyclone on Letterman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FhVbyeWFvo
# ? Oct 2, 2012 15:51
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25 of the Best Leadership and Success Books to Read in Your Lifetime, According to Amazon
By Shana Lebowitz
Amazon’s editors selected their 100 favorite books on leadership and success.
We’ve highlighted 25 below, including books by psychologists, economists, and competitive athletes. Each one offers a unique look at what it means to be truly successful and how you can achieve your full potential.
Read on and start stocking your shelves with inspiration.
‘Getting to Yes’ by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton
Based on the work of the Harvard Negotiation Project, this 1981 best-selling business book — the second edition was released in 1991 — offers strategies for dealing with personal and professional conflicts. Those include separating the people from the problem and focusing on interests, not positions.
Find it here »
‘Getting Things Done’ by David Allen
Thirteen years after its first publication, productivity guru Allen released the second edition of “Getting Things Done.”
The book teaches readers the basics of time management at work and at home. The idea is to come up with an organizing system for daily to-dos so you free up mental space for focusing on big-picture goals.
Case in point: the “two-minute rule” to keep an overflowing inbox under control.
‘Getting More’ by Stuart Diamond
In this best-seller, Diamond turns traditional negotiation strategies on their head, instead suggesting that it’s important to value your partner’s emotions and perceptions.
As Diamond wrote on Business Insider:
The more important the negotiation is, the more emotional people tend to be — whether diplomacy, a billion-dollar deal or my kid wants an ice cream cone. Pay attention to this! The world is not rational.
The book is based on Diamond’s course at Wharton Business School, and Google has even used it in its employee training.
‘Freakonomics’ by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Levitt, an economist, and Dubner, a New York Times journalist, make economics accessible by showing how it applies to pretty much every issue, from cheating to parenting.
Soon after publishing the book, the authors started a blog and then a podcast by the same name, both now popular.
‘Flying Without a Net’ by Thomas J. DeLong
DeLong, a Harvard Business School professor and a former Morgan Stanley executive, wrote this book to help other high-need-for-achievement professionals like him overcome their anxieties and live life to the fullest.
The book helps readers confront their deepest fears and gives them a series of practical tools for dealing with them.
‘Flow’ by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“Flow,” according to positive psychologist Csikszentmihalyi, is the state of getting so absorbed in your work that it flows effortlessly and you don’t pay attention to things like time passing or hunger. You might call it being “in the zone.”
Your success depends largely on your ability to achieve this state, the author argues.
“It is the full involvement of flow, rather than happiness, that makes for excellence in life,” he wrote on Psychology Today.
‘First, Break all the Rules’ by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
Facebook’s HR chief, Lori Goler,told Business Insider that this book heavily influenced her management philosophy. After reading it, she worked to turn Facebook into a “strengths-based” organization.
According to the authors, two Gallup analysts, the keys to great management include focusing on strengths and finding the right fit for each employee. That way, people get to develop what they’re already skilled at.
‘Find a Way’ by Diana Nyad
In 2013, Nyad became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage, at 64.
In “Find a Way,” she describes the experiences leading up to this achievement — including failing the Cuba Swim 30 years earlier — and explains how she developed the perseverance necessary to become an American hero.
‘Execution’ by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
In 1998, Bossidy was named CEO of the year by Chief Executive magazine for his leadership of AlliedSignal.
In 2002, he partnered with business consultant Ram Charan to write a book about his own experience leading a company to greatness, mainly by hiring the right people.
“If you want to be a CEO — or if you are a CEO and want to keep your job — read ‘Execution’ and put its principles to work,” said Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Computer Corp.
‘Essentialism’ by Greg McKeown
“Essentialism,” according to McKeown, is about doing fewer things better. The book helps readers figure out which personal and professional pursuits are worth their time and eliminate the rest.
The book isn’t just geared toward business leaders, either. As McKeown told NPR, it’s “for people who feel that they don’t have the power to push back and so they’ve given up the right to negotiate non-essentials. And as soon as you give up that right then you lose a lot of power.”
‘Emotional Intelligence’ by Daniel Goleman
In this now classic book, Goleman, a psychologist, suggests that IQ isn’t all that matters for success. In fact, it might not matter nearly as much as your ability to manage your own and other people’s emotions.
Fortunately, this trait can be learned, and Goleman outlines the five core components of emotional intelligence so that readers can start developing it.
‘Elon Musk’ by Ashlee Vance
This biography of one of the greatest tech entrepreneurs of our time outlines Musk’s rise to success.
Readers gain insight into Musk’s personality, his leadership style, and the big ideas that have always inspired him.
‘Eat That Frog!’ by Brian Tracy
The title of this book comes from Mark Twain’s classic quotation: “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” In other words, do your hardest task first, when you have sufficient energy and attention, instead of wasting time on easier stuff.
That’s just one of 21 practical strategies for overcoming procrastination that Tracy offers, from writing everything down on paper to obeying the law of “forced efficiency.”
‘Drive’ by Daniel H. Pink
Pink is the author of a number of popular business books, and in this 2009 best-seller, he takes issue with the idea that you can motivate people with incentives alone.
Instead, Pink proposes that everyone needs to achieve a sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose before they can do great work.
‘Do Over’ by Jon Acuff
Acuff wants to help prepare readers for an unexpected turn in their careers — whether that means losing a job or being presented with a great new opportunity.
Drawing on his own 16 years of experience in corporate America, he advocates for creating what he calls a “career savings account.” That’s where you stash all the skills and experiences you’ve accumulated in the categories of relationships, skills, character, and “hustle.”
‘Crush It!’ by Gary Vaynerchuk
Vaynerchuk, an entrepreneur and a tech investor, writes that there’s no better time to pursue your passion and start your business than right now.
By working hard and learning all you can, you can use the digital tools available to you to build a hugely successful brand.
‘Choose Yourself’ by James Altucher
It’s a new world, Altucher says, and traditional routes to success won’t work.
“The only way we can thrive as entrepreneurs, artists, innovators, or whatever we want to do to live successful lives is to choose ourselves for that success,” Altucher told Business Insider in 2013. “No longer can we rely on the old paradigms (‘school’, ‘corporations’, ‘government,’ etc.) to provide the safety and success we deserve.”
Altucher shares his own entrepreneurial journey and those of others as inspiration to forge your personal path to success.
‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Amy Newmark
In 2013, “Chicken Soup for the Soul” celebrated its 20th anniversary of warming people’s hearts with 20 additional inspirational stories.
Readers learn about love, parenting, and pursuing their dreams from real people who have lived through the same struggles they have.
‘Change Your Brain, Change Your Life’ by Daniel G. Amen
Neuropsychiatrist Daniel Amen offers simple “brain prescriptions” for overcoming a number of psychological and emotional hurdles, including anxiety and anger. There are writing exercises, breathing exercises, and even brain-friendly dietary guidelines.
These solutions are juxtaposed with Ames’ discussion of fascinating research findings on the connection between your brain, feelings, and behavior.
‘Business Adventures’ by John Brooks
This 1969 collection of articles by New Yorker writer John Brooks is one of Bill Gates’ favorite books, originally recommended by Warren Buffett.
Gates writes:
Brooks’s work is a great reminder that the rules for running a strong business and creating value haven’t changed. For one thing, there’s an essential human factor in every business endeavor. It doesn’t matter if you have a perfect product, production plan and marketing pitch; you’ll still need the right people to lead and implement those plans.
Business Insider rounded up seven lessons from the book, including the importance of corporate culture and learning from failure.
‘Big Magic’ by Elizabeth Gilbert
Gilbert, author of the best-selling book “Eat, Pray, Love,” wants to help readers overcome their fears and channel their creative potential, just like she did.
Each of the book’s six sections — on courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust, and divinity — includes tips and strategies for finding inspiration and cultivating curiosity in your daily life.
‘Awaken the Giant Within’ by Tony Robbins
This 1992 best-seller by one of the world’s most well-known motivational speakers offers practical strategies for finding and pursuing your passions.
As one reader on Goodreads put it: “This book will make you rich, but rich in mind, body, [and] spirit, and material wealth will follow if that is your desire.”
‘Andrew Carnegie’ by David Nasaw
Nasaw’s rags-to-riches tale outlines how a poor Scottish immigrant became the wealthiest man in the US after helping to build the steel industry. What’s more, readers will learn why Carnegie ultimately decided to give away his entire fortune.
We also think it’s one of the best biographies to read if you want to get rich.
‘A New Earth’ by Eckhart Tolle
Like “The Power of Now,” also by Tolle, “A New Earth” encourages readers to live in the present if they want to find true happiness. He outlines steps to transcending our ego-based state of consciousness and reaching a more enlightened state.
The book was selected as Oprah’s Book Club pick in 2009.
‘#Girlboss’ by Sophia Amoruso
In “#Girlboss,” the founder of retailer Nasty Gal, shares stories from her wayward youth, including stealing and dumpster-diving, and how it paved the way for her tremendous success.
The book is full of practical life and career advice that will inspire you to follow your passion and forge your own path. The bottom line? It won’t be easy, but it will definitely be worth it.
More from Business Insider:
WayUp CEO and cofounder LIz Wessel always knew she wanted to be an entrepreneur.
A CEO and former Googler shares 2 tricks for cold emailing anyone
12 highly influential people share the morning routines that set them up for success
Originally published on Business Insider.
Tnks for sharing
Nice works they are esucative
I think i will go and get one for myself
Fredcity
I will try some of those books
“Change your brain, change your life “amazing! inspiring! thank you for this piece.
First,break the rules…very interesting
Columbus1
Thanks so much for the inspiring article.
Thanks is awesome
Thanks for this lovely aricle
Kensea
That’s true because I’ve Read one of the book’s business adventures.
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The Real Reason Why ‘S-Town’ is So Popular
It’s not just the story or the quality of production that had led to the podcast’s success. An additional factor has played a massively important part.
First, let me set the scene for you. I was leaving work. It was Wednesday, it was really nice out. I could drive home with the windows open; for a little while at least. As I walked to my car I opened the Podcasts app on my phone. I needed to get a jump on selecting something to listen to on the way home. Safety first for this guy. I scrolled through my unplayed episodes and it was at that moment that I was struck by a sickening, sad feeling.
I had finished S-Town.
What the (expletive deleted) was I going to listen to now?
Of course I had some options, but that wasn’t the problem. Well it kind of was. Actually, it might have totally been the problem, and in that moment I realized why S-Town was as popular as it is: timing. It was all about timing.
Other reasons of course for S-Town‘s popularity: quality, content
Those are good reasons, but I think that in order to fully grasp the current phenomenon that is the latest podcast from the Serial folks, examining the context in which it was released is important. Why? Because if any moment in time in the past year or so has all but begged and groveled for something like S-Town, it’s been these past few weeks.
Since the Inauguration, we have been straight up slammered with depressing, scary, sad and down right reality-questioning news. Meddling Russians, frequent Executive Orders, more meddling Russians, conflicts of interests, baseless accusations, disheartening rationalizations, even more meddling Russians and a general feeling of disgust with our governing institutions have hijacked our lives. It has become hard to avoid at times, whether it’s notifications constantly popping up on our phone, Twitter being bombarded with the latest from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or late-night hosts devoting the majority of their shows to lampooning what might have happened that day. Escapism is becoming a lost art, something proving to be more and more unattainable with each passing day.
Sports is always a reliable form of escapism, but sports has been somewhat hit or miss since that rough and tumble day in January when our current President took office. The Super Bowl was an unassailable high, but the time in between the Patriots’ amazing overtime win and the next noteworthy event, NCAA March Madness, felt like an eternity. You know, because even though February is technically the shortest month of the year, it feels like the longest month. Why? Context, dude. It’s the middle of winter, thus making it feel longer than it is because the middle of winter is the worst.
So there we were, trudging towards the end of March, desperately hoping for some kind of good news, something to take our minds off of the nastiness ensnaring our daily lives and then on Tuesday March 28, amidst the confusing news of Devin Nunes sneaking on and off the White House grounds, Trump tearing up Obama’s environmental regulations and a handful of other tidbits of disparity I can’t even remember anymore, S-Town was dropped into our laps. Suddenly we had a distraction, a way to ignore all the depressing news, and could instead immerse ourselves into Brian Reed’s adventures into the heart of Woodstock, Alabama and the wildly interesting and tragically sad life of John B. McLemore. You could deep dive right in, soaking in the seven plus hours as fast as possible or you could spread it out, which is what I did. Instead of listening to a politics podcast or a sports podcast both to and from work, I could balance it out. Some news of the day in the morning, then some S-Town in the evening, or vice versa. I could follow the plight of Dan Taberski as he tried to find the suddenly reclusive Richard Simmons on the podcast Missing Richard Simmons on my way in and get back into the specifics of antique clock restoration later in the day. It was a very appealing situation to be in.
With a window open just ever so slightly, S-Town was able to slide in and bring with it freshness and sunlight, as well as a more-than-welcome distraction at a time when we needed it more than ever. The podcast would no doubt be popular regardless of the release date, but I can’t help but think and believe that it has raked in the numbers it has because of timing. The Bachelor is kind of in the same boat here. Obviously people would watch that show, no matter when it aired, but I do think the fact that it airs in the dead of winter, on Monday nights, contributes to the show’s success. It’s there when we need it most, just like S-Town. When something is released never seems to get the kind of love and attention it deserves when we’re talking about the success of something, but I think it’s worth noting. You can’t tell me that Drake’s album mix tape playlist More Life wouldn’t be even more popular than it is if he had dropped it on the cusp of summer. It’s full of potential summer jams! That was a missed opportunity, sir. The same could be said for Calvin Harris. He should have totally put off releasing “Slide” for a couple months.
Since Serial brought podcasts into the mainstream in 2014 there has been no shortage of podcasts for a person to listen to. There is a podcast out there for everything, something for you no matter your interests, political leanings or preferred sports team. Want a breakdown of the latest episode of Game of Thrones or The Bachelor, you literally have dozens of options to chose from. It’s fantastic. It’s like the current state of television, where there are endless shows and hundreds of channels, on steroids.
Yet the downside of that is the lack of one or two consensus of podcasts, just like there have been a dearth of consensus television shows outside of Game of Thrones. Everything is more fun when you can then talk to someone about it. But if we’re all listening and watching different things, that makes it hard to do. I would love to talk about the most recent episode of The Americans with someone, but no one around here watches it. In terms of podcasts, I’ve been hooked on Crimetown for a couple weeks now, but I have been the only person I know who has been following along with the history of organized crime in Providence, Rhode Island. In the Dark got some attention, but even that show’s scope and audience was somewhat limited. That one podcast that everyone is listening to just hasn’t been there and since Serial, mainly the first season, although it was true to a lesser extent with the second season, we really haven’t had that.
And then S-Town came along, and within a few days, it was all anyone could talk about. One of the results of Serial’s popularity was that it turned people onto podcasts, people who hadn’t given them the time of day before a friend urged them to give Serial a shot. S-Town seemed to gobble up those remaining few who still hadn’t latched onto them. And also like Serial, conversations about S-Town were happening in a variety of situations. I was involved in two different conversations about the show at my daughter’s birthday party this past weekend and I don’t have enough fingers to keep track of the number of articles and think pieces I have at least skimmed about the show. As someone who considers themselves an avid listener of podcasts, it was definitely refreshing to ask someone if they had heard of this new podcast I was listening to and have them actually answer yes.
One of those age old sayings is that timing is everything. Yes, it’s not the only thing, but it’s definitely a major thing. S-Town is great new podcast because it’s an exceptionally produced story about interesting and engaging content. It’s haunting, sad, funny and captivating. However, S-Town is popular because in addition to those factors, it was released at the exact perfect time, at a time when we needed it most.
Almost like clockwork.
Category: Bachelor Nation, Current Events, Podcasts
Tag: consensus television, escapism, podcasts, S-Town, serial
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Green | Asian Carp Threat: Real or Overblown?
Asian Carp Threat: Real or Overblown?
By John Collins Rudolf
July 14, 2010 2:59 pm July 14, 2010 2:59 pm
Associated Press Gov. Patrick J. Quinn and Liang Chang, chairman of the Beijing Zhuocheng Animal Husbandry Company, announcing a joint deal to ship Asian carp from Illinois to China for consumption.
On Monday, I wrote about the Asian carp, an invasive species that has been steadily making its way up the Mississippi River toward Lake Michigan. Many in the Great Lakes region fear that the fish, a voracious filter feeder and prolific breeder, could wreck havoc on the region’s fisheries by disrupting the food chain, as it has done in parts of the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois Rivers.
As the fish creeps closer to Lake Michigan, the oratory of the region’s politicians regarding the significance of the threat has grown more heated. Some locals are even calling the looming threat Carp-ageddon. In response to my post, a number of readers asked whether these fears were scientifically valid: does the alarm match the reality?
With some strong caveats, the answer is probably yes.
A great deal remains to be learned about the Asian carp, but interviews with several experts suggest that preventive measures to halt the infiltration of the fish into the Great Lakes may well avert a minor ecological catastrophe.
“They are a substantial threat,” said Duane Chapman, a research fish biologist and Asian carp expert with the United States Geological Survey. “These fish could cause drastic undesirable consequences.”
And while there is no scientific consensus on how the fish will fare in the Great Lakes, federal agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency as well as a slew of state wildlife agencies and independent university biologists have expressed strong concerns that Asian carp could cause huge problems for existing species and disrupt the ecology of the Great Lakes.
It is worth noting that the Asian carp is no ordinary fish. It grows rapidly and can weigh up to 30 pounds within a few years, and females are highly fecund, able to produce as many as a million eggs at a time. The fish reproduce so swiftly that the species now constitutes up to 90 percent of the biomass in some stretches of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers.
The Asian carp is also a spectacular leaper, able to fling its body 10 feet above the water or higher, a phenomenon caused by noise, particularly from motorboats. As a result, in rivers where the carp has taken over, pleasure boaters, water skiers and fishermen are increasingly being forced to dodge huge flying fish as they motor down their favorite waterway – not the most pleasant way to spend an afternoon.
But while many see a scaly doom on the horizon, there are some indications that the Asian carp may not find the Great Lakes entirely welcoming. The fish are filter feeders, and the arrival of another invasive species decades ago – zebra and quagga mussels – stripped much of the algae out of the water column in the lakes’ deep open waters.
This lack of food may keep the fish from colonizing the entire lake system – but still leave prime fishing and recreational areas near the shoreline at risk.
Whether the carp can breed successfully in the Great Lakes is another unanswered question. Asian carp require fast-flowing water in order to reproduce; like salmon, they swim upstream, spawn and allow their fertilized eggs to drift downstream. Unfortunately, several major rivers flow into Lake Michigan that may fit the carp’s needs.
“The Grand River is one that these fish could probably reach within a year or so and use as a spawning ground,” said Ed Rutherford, a fisheries biologist with the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory at NOAA.
Still, some areas where the carp have taken over are turning lemons into lemonade: just yesterday, Gov. Patrick J. Quinn of Illinois signed an agreement to export up to 30 million pounds of Asian carp annually from the Illinois River to China, where it is considered a tasty dish.
“If you can’t beat ’em, eat ’em,” Mr. Quinn said at a news conference.
A Warm Atlantic Stokes Hurricane Fears
May the Best Flusher Win
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Heroes / Legal Fictions
GuileisGood.com / Marshall / Michael Asimow / Thurgood Marshall
Michael Asimow of Stanford Law School shares with us his review of the new film Marshall:
This enjoyable and inspiring movie is a worthy contribution to the courtroom movie genre. You’re going to love it.
The movie memorializes the great Thurgood Marshall (who later won Brown v. Bd. of Education and sat on the Supreme Court). The film brings to life a forgotten rape case in Connecticut that Marshall tried early in his career when he was the solo staff lawyer at the NAACP. The story focusses on the plight of a black man accused of raping a white woman and it highlights issues of racism and classism in the courtroom and on the streets.
The movie recalls the classic films “To Kill a Mockingbird” (which also involved a black on white rape case) and “Anatomy of a Murder.” Like “Anatomy,” which also involved sexual issues, the trial consumes most of the movie. What I really liked about “Marshall,” as well as “Anatomy of a Murder,” is that–as in real life–a trial is an attempt to reconstruct the past but we can never be sure of what actually happened. The jury must select between conflicting narratives about the disputed events and we (like the jury) can never be certain of who is telling the truth. The lawyer’s job is to come up with a story that fits the facts and sell it to the jury. As this blog emphasizes, guile is good and Marshall was definitely not lacking in guile.
The writing of this film is sharp and witty and the acting and direction are great. Particularly strong is the emerging partnership and friendship of Marshall and the local lawyer, Sam Friedman. Marshall was not admitted in Connecticut and so he needed a local lawyer as co-counsel. Friedman is a Jewish lawyer specializing in insurance defense who had never tried a criminal case and thought he would just sit next to Marshall during the trial and and do nothing. But the racist judge refuses to allow Marshall to participate in the trial and requirers the terrified Friedman to conduct the entire trial with Marshall serving as his adviser. The way Friedman rises to the occasion is quite inspiring and recalls the great days of Black/Jewish collaboration in the civil rights movement.
Go see this film as soon as you can and tell your friends about it
David Fielding says
Hmmmm, I’m not sure what part of this is Michael Asimow’s review and what part is John Denvir’s commentary. Regardless, am looking forward to the movie.
denvirj says
The first paragraph in italics)is my introduction, and the remainder is Asimow’s review. I apologize for any confusion.
John Denvir
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Updated: November 2, 2018 9:27 am
Alberta regulator apologizes for spooking public with $260-billion cleanup cost estimate
By Carolyn Jarvis, Emma McIntosh, StarMetro Calgary, Steph Wechsler and Mike de Souza, National Observer Special to Global News
Stunning, internal documents from Alberta's Energy Regulator estimate the cost to clean up Alberta's oil and gas industry may be $260 billion. $200 billion more than has been publicly reported. Carolyn Jarvis reports.
The Alberta Energy Regulator is apologizing for a “staggering” presentation, made last February by one of its highest-ranking officials, warning the province’s oilpatch that it could be sitting on an estimated $260 billion in financial liabilities.
The details of the presentation, made by the regulator’s vice-president of closure and liability, Robert Wadsworth, riled up the Alberta and federal legislatures after his remarks were made public in a report on Thursday by National Observer,Global News, the Toronto Star and StarMetro Calgary.
The estimated liabilities he cited in his February presentation are $200 billion greater than the previous calculation made public by the regulator. The AER had previously said the cost was just over $58 billion.
READ MORE: Cleaning up Alberta’s oilpatch could cost $260 billion, internal documents warn
The report, based on speaking notes released through freedom of information legislation, revealed how Wadsworth had noted the “flawed” nature of Alberta’s oversight of industry, as he warned industry to prepare for tougher rules to crack down on a growing number of inactive sites.
Wadsworth has declined to give an interview about his remarks and the regulator said earlier this week in a statement that the estimates he released were based on a worst-case scenario involving a “complete and immediate” shutdown of the entire industry.
But following the media report, the regulator went further, suggesting the decision to use the numbers in the presentation was a mistake.“We want to apologize for the concern and confusion that this information has caused,” said the statement.
“The numbers are staggering – $260 billion in total liability, which is $200 billion more than we have consistently reported. This particular estimate was created for a presentation to try and hammer home the message to industry that the current liability system needs improvement.
“While the message to address liability is important, the numbers were not validated and were based on a hypothetical worst-case scenario. Using these estimates was an error in judgement and one we deeply regret.”
Vice-President of Closure and Liability for the Alberta Energy Regulator, Rob Wadsworth.
Alberta Energy Regulator
That statement appears to be at odds with Wadsworth’s presentation, which stated multiple times that the $260-billion figure was likely to be a low estimate.
The $58 billion calculation, according to Wadsworth’s presentation notes, is based on self-reported numbers from industry. The $260 billion estimate, meanwhile, was “calculated internally” by AER’s own experts.
The AER said Thursday that its earlier, public figure of $58.65 billion was an “AER-verified” calculation of current liabilities.
When asked if it didn’t agree with the presentation, the regulator would only say the higher estimate had “not been validated by the AER.”
He also warned that provincial officials needed to act quickly to ensure taxpayers were not left on the hook for the liabilities, since companies had only submitted about $1.6 billion in security deposits to cover the cost.
The liability estimate factors in the costs of shutting down and cleaning up oil and gas sites at the end of their useful lives, such as inactive wells, pipelines and tailings ponds in the oil sands.
READ MORE: Hot Jobs: Is working in oil and gas still a surefire way to make a lot of money?
Pressed by journalists to respond to the report, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley noted that the problem was significant.
She said the liabilities would be hard to address amid the “biggest oil price drops in generations,” adding that company practices have improved, but after decades of buildup, the existing problem is “not one that we can fix overnight.”
“The issue has always been one that is of concern to us,” Notley said. “It’s actually a matter that I raised with the provincial government well before we were in government – back when I was in opposition.”
WATCH: Premier Notley on cleaning up Alberta’s oilpatch: ‘We need to find ways to address the legacy problem’
United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney declined to comment on the investigation’s findings.
However, UCP MLA Jason Nixon said his party will likely have more to say about the issue in Alberta’s upcoming provincial election, scheduled for Spring 2019.
“Regulations were behind when our industry started, and there’s going to be some creative ways that governments in the future are going to have to look at tackling,” Nixon said. “I don’t have an answer for that today.”
The issue also came up during question period in the House of Commons on Thursday, as federal politicians sparred over the investigation’s findings.
Alexandre Boulerice, NDP MP for Rosemont — La Petite-Patrie, asked what it would take to get the Liberal government to take “real action” on climate change.
“That’s a hefty bill for pollution,” Boulerice said in French, referring to the estimated $260 billion price tag.
“When you have to take the Liberals to court to get them to take real steps on climate change, things must be pretty bad. Is that what the Liberals are waiting for? To be taken to court?”
The federal minister responsible for intergovernmental affairs disagreed.
“On the contrary,” responded the minister, Dominic LeBlanc. “We’ve shown that we would take climate change seriously. We have a plan that Canadians understand and that they know will make a real difference in the fight against climate change.”
In its new statement from Thursday, the regulator added that regardless of the estimates, it was still working directly with companies to introduce new requirements that improve oversight.
— With files from Kieran Leavitt, StarMetro Edmonton
Alberta bitumen
Alberta Oil
oilpatch Alberta
Price of oil
Rachel Notley
Rob Wadsworth
The Price of Oil
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Seiken Densetsu 3 could arrive on Nintendo Switch
On the Twitter profile of the series of Secret of Mana, there appeared a short video of not greater than ten seconds showing Seiken Densetsu 3 run on Nintendo Switch. The title was originally released in 1995 on Super Nintendo, exclusively in Japan.
Unexpectedly, Square Enix has videotaped Seiken Densetsu 3 for Nintendo Switch. Is it for the Virtual Console or something apart? It turns out that on the official Twitter account of the franchise, @Seiken_PR, a video of this RPG called Seiken Densetsu 3 was shown running on the new console of the Big N.
Something else here is unusual, as you can see in the filming that accompanies this note, the game looks pretty good, but the curious thing is the background that is seen behind. It does not give the impression of being a title of the Virtual Console, but something a bit more elaborate.
As you can imagine, at the moment it is not known if this game will be on the platform, or it is only a “test” on the part of Square Enix.
Seiken Densetsu 3 was never released in the West and has never made an appearance on the Virtual Console of Wii, 3DS or Wii U. It is possible that Square-Enix is actually thinking of bringing this episode of Secret of Mana on Nintendo Switch with a revised edition, or maybe just as a download on the Virtual Console.
For now the publisher has not made any announcements about it, we are hopefully waiting to learn more about the possible arrival of Seiken Densetsu 3 on Nintendo Switch.
#聖剣伝説 pic.twitter.com/uXD0hey02H
— 聖剣伝説 -公式- (@Seiken_PR) March 20, 2017
NintendoNintendo SwitchSeiken Densetsu 3video game
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Anthony Scaramucci’s Appointment Has Everyone Looking At The Lyrics For “Bohemian Rhapsody”
by JohnGanz
@JohnGanz
Referenced Artists
Referenced Songs
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
President Trump’s appointment of Anthony Scaramucci to White House Communications Director on July 21 has had one somewhat unforeseen effect: searches for Queen’s iconic song “Bohemian Rhapsody” spiked 350 percent on Genius. The song has sustained steady traffic ever since.
In particular, the interest revolves around the lyric that was immortalized in the lip-synch scene of the 1992 film Wayne’s World:
Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?
It’s not just a coincidence that “Scaramouche” sounds likes “Scaramucci”: Scaramucci, or Scaramuccia, is an alternate name of Scaramouche, a stock character from Italian commedia dell'Arte plays. Commedia dell'Arte is a form of comedic theater that originated in the late Renaissance, and features the hi-jinks of masked clowns who usually represent social stereotypes, like cunning servants, greedy merchants, and pompous academics. The Scaramouche character is traditionally a roguish figure in a mask that can be played stupid or clever depending on the play, often is incompetent while making an ostentatious display of competence, and is described in the plays as a “buffoonish figure” who performs an “enabling role” in the drama, and whose speech often is a “debasing of official discourse.”
The New York Times did not miss the Scaramucci/Scaramouche connection either, with reporters Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman concluding their piece on the resignation of former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer by remarking: “The end came in operatic fashion, befitting Mr. Scaramucci’s namesake—a stock character in Italian musical theater. As Mr. Scaramucci made his big entrance, Mr. Spicer exited quietly, disheartened that the president never quite appreciated his performance.”
What’s still unclear is if Mr. Scaramucci will do the Fandango, a type of Spanish dance, as the famous Queen lyric suggests.
You can read all the lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody” on Genius now.
Donald Trump Reveals His Favorite Song Ever (And It’s Pretty Dark)
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Jake Gyllenhaal altercation in Montréal restaurant– EXCLUSIVE HollywoodPQ!
As we announced earlier, Jake Gyllenhaal might have been involved in an altercation over the weekend, while he was at the restaurant Garde-Manger, in the Old Montreal.
We had the chance to obtain an exclusive interview with the friend of Jesus Martinez (writer of the blog Drunkenstepfather.com), who was there at the moment of the altercation, and who broke the story on his website earlier this week. The friend of the blogger, who wants to stay anonymous, shared her version of the story with us and answered a couple of our questions.
HollywoodPQ: Could you tell us what happened exactly?
Friend: My friend Jesus Martinez (Drunkenstepfather) and I were having drinks at Garde-Manger. There was only a few clients, it was very low-key, just a calm evening. Then, Jake Gyllenhaal arrived with a couple of his pals. He had so many bottles at his table, and he was very loud, dancing on his seat and laughing with his friends. As if he was putting on a show, acting out more than everyone would ask for. It really stood out in the calm of the restaurant. My friend (Jesus Martinez) went to Jake and told him something. He suddenly got up and started screaming, waving his arms around, telling my friend to leave. The staff of the restaurant then escorted him outside. I got up and went to Jake to tell him to calm down. All of a sudden, he started screaming, two inches away from my face: "Who are you? Who do you think you are to tell me to calm down?" and then pushing me. I fell on a table and started crying… After all, i just wanted to tell him to calm down! One of his friends took me apart, saying than it wasn’t a good idea to tell him this. I left right after, as the staff was asking me to leave anyway.
HollywoodPQ: How do you feel now?
Friend: Well, it was just a bad experience…
HollywoodPQ: Do you regret having talked to him?
Friend: No. I think if an actor goes out in a public place, he has to expect having people telling him things. It’s not as if he’s on a movie set, where everyone who works for him are being nice.
HollywoodPQ: Are you going to press charges?
Friend: No. For the same reasons that I want to stay anonymous. It’s a bad memory, but I have a clean name and I want it to stay that way.
HollywoodPQ: On the blog Drunkenstepfather, the lawyers of Jake Gyllenhaal asked for all posts about the incident to be taken down. Also, the actor’s friends and the restaurant’s staff deny what happened. What do you think about that?
Friend: Of course they’re going to deny! It’s frustrating that we don’t have pictures. It all happened very fast. For those who saying that this story is a publicity stunt, i don’t see how that would be the case… My friend blogs on what he sees. If he sees someone fall in the street, he will write about it. Same thing goes for an actor throwing a fit in a restaurant.
HollywoodPQ: Thank you very much for your time. Out of curiosity, were you a fan of Jake Gyllenhaal before this incident?
Friend: Well, i saw a couple of his movies… He looks like a nice guy, so i kinda get why people would be shocked about the incident. But it really happened!
What a story! Well, let’s say that if the girl wasn’t a fan of the actor before, there is certainly no way to convince her to become one now!
Crédit photo: Flynet
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You are here: Home » Farm-to-Fork News » Agriculture » UAE: Dubai Industrial Park Launches a Report Exploring Global Food Trends up to 2030
UAE: Dubai Industrial Park Launches a Report Exploring Global Food Trends up to 2030
Dubai Industrial Park, one of the largest industrial hubs in Dubai and a member of TECOM Group, has launched a report titled ‘Global Food Trends to 2030: With a Closer Look at the GCC’ in collaboration with The Economist Intelligence Unit.
The report, which the Park commissioned in an effort to contribute to the body of knowledge around the food manufacturing industry in the region, was launched in a special event on the sidelines of Gulfood on Monday, February 18, endorsed by the presence of Her Excellency Mariam Al Mehairi.
Saud Abu Al-Shawareb, Managing Director of Dubai Industrial Park presented key findings from the report, which identifies 20 global agri-food trends indicating the planet’s prospects for the future, and how this relates to the Gulf region, from the manufacturing stage to the supply chain. The release of the report reinforces Dubai Industrial Park’s continuous commitment to develop the industrial sector, from manufacturing to complementary logistics and trade in the UAE and to elevate Dubai’s position as a global hub for innovation-driven businesses in line with the Dubai Industrial Strategy 2030.
The whitepaper highlights the ability of countries within the region to harness the technological advances of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to boost agricultural production, with the UAE leading the way. It also suggests that through leveraging its role as a significant trade hub, the region can position itself as a pioneer in fostering trade in sustainably sourced food with its associated economic benefits, and help reduce food supply risks at a time of increasing global trade uncertainty.
The report calls for a full assessment of the economic, environmental and technological risks facing the Gulf region’s food system. Furthermore, it weighs the region’s challenges – including dependency on imports, reduced agricultural capacity and limited access to freshwater – against its opportunities and strengths, such as the emergence of technological advances in agriculture, high trade volumes flowing from Asia to Europe and Africa, and vice versa, as well as world-class ports equipped with state-of-the-art technologies.
The whitepaper states: “Given recent global trade developments (rising tariffs, the proliferation of regional trade agreements and potential realignment of trade flows), the GCC is presented with an opportunity to demonstrate its leadership in promoting open and efficient food trade. Moreover, the emergence of new technologies to improve supply chain integrity and productivity will be particularly relevant for reasserting the region’s food trade leadership.”
Commending the UAE’s efforts in the field, the document cites the example of a joint project of Dubai government-owned Emirates Flight Catering and US-based food production innovator Crop One to build the world’s largest vertical farm using hydroponics that can serve as a model for public-private partnerships in this space.
In her keynote speech during the event, Her Excellency Mariam Al Mahairi, Minister of State for Food security said: “I am excited to be here today during the milestone of Dubai Industrial Park’s whitepaper launch, as this will help us further understand where the trends are directed today. At the Food Security Office, our efforts are aimed at achieving food security, today and in the future, and the wise leadership has placed food security among its top national priorities.”
“In November 2018, we developed the National Strategy for Food Security where we placed short term outcomes for 2021 and long-term outcomes for 2051, and with that, we aim to position the UAE as world’s best in the Global Food Security Index by 2051 and among the top 10 countries by 2021.”
Speaking at the launch event, Saud Abu Al-Shawareb said: “Dubai continues to strengthen its non-oil economic sectors, particularly food and beverage (F&B) and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) – one of the target sub-sectors of the Dubai Industrial Strategy 2030 that aims to advance industrial development in the emirate and increase its overall contribution to the GDP.”
He added: “As a taskforce leader in realising Dubai Industrial Strategy, one of our objectives at Dubai Industrial Park is to generate relevant industry specific knowledge about technological advancements and the latest trends to accelerate development in this field taking into consideration issues such as food security and climate change mitigation.”
The whitepaper features in-depth interviews with food experts, academics and senior food company executives from around the world, including the GCC region. Its case studies focus on food security challenges, environmental damage, health and nutrition, and opportunities that technology presents.
The report concludes: “How countries and supply chains respond to the vast array of food issues, including the 20 agri-food trends identified in this report, could very well be a leading indicator of how the planet’s overall prospects will be defined for the future. Successful approaches to producing, supplying and consuming food, touch on every issue including health, environment, rural and urban populations, human and animal rights, social stability and governance, and jobs, livelihoods and prosperity. Managing food could become the global catalyst for positive change or, if improperly handled, it could accelerate the deterioration of ecosystems, people’s health and societal stability.”
Dubai Industrial Park, one of the largest industrial and manufacturing hubs in Dubai, provides state-of-the-art infrastructure and integrated solutions for businesses. The park hosts over 250 factories and over 700 business partners in sector-specific zones. Key business partners in the food and beverage sector include Al Barakah Dates, Barakat, Almarai, Patchi, Alshaya, Asmak, and Lulu.
Dubai Industrial Park is a major contributor to strengthening Dubai’s status as a destination for international manufacturers and traders. Total industrial investment in Dubai Industrial Park reached AED 8.4 billion, while the investment in its infrastructure exceeded AED 4.7 billion since inception.
Dubai Industrial Park is participating at Gulfood 2019 at stand CC7-10 in Concourse 2 at Dubai World Trade Centre from 17 to 21 February.
Learn more about Dubai Industrial Park’s participation at www.dubaiindustrialpark.ae/DITalks2019
Tags: agri-food trends, Dubai Industrial Park, Global Food Trends to 2030
Category: Agriculture, Food Manufacturing, Food Security, Food Service, GeoPolitics, Halal Trade, Ingredients, Islamic Economy, Market Intelligence, Media & Events, Research
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All public policy decisions should be based on open source data
Last update: Saturday 12/8/18
DLL Editor's note: Basing public policy decisions on open source data is an old idea. It's been around for a long time, assuming different names from time to time. I am just the latest "visionary" to recognize its necessity.
My personal epiphany came at the close of the first Harvard trial in Boston (October/November 2018) that challenged its race-based affirmative action admissions policies. I have personal interests in this case as a Black educator and as an alum of one of Harvard's PhD programs.
The advocates for the plaintiffs, i.e., for the Asian American students whose applications had been rejected by Harvard's admissions office, hired an economist to develop a statistical model that was used to analyze the data in the files of six years of applications to Harvard that was shared with the plaintiffs as part of the discovery process. The model estimated that Asian applicants had been unfairly rejected in favor of Black and other minority applicants. In response, Harvard's expert witness, another economist, declared that the plaintiff's model was "deeply flawed" so its estimates of enrollment penalties imposed on Asian American applicants were invalid. We are now awaiting the judge's decision.
Everyone understands that this trial was not just about Harvard's admissions policies. Everyone expects that this case will be appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court. The highest court in the land will then decide whether race-conscious affirmative action admissions can be used by any U.S. college or university. In other words, the ultimate judicial decision will be a public policy decision that will affect every college and university in the country.
What concerned me about this process was that pundits in the general media and in the higher ed media were voicing strong opinions about the case even though they did not have access to the underlying data. What concerned me even more was that many concerned citizens, like myself and the readers of this blog, read the pundits' opinions, then formed own opinions, even though we did not have access to the underlying data. Of course, without the benefit of the underlying data most of our opinions were merely reiterations of our old opinions; hence they were probably irrelevant to Harvard's trial.
The difference between me and other concerned citizens was that I had the time to explore related data that was available from a public source: IPEDS. I used IPEDS data to develop my own estimates of the increased share of Harvard's enrollments that Asian American applicants might gain if race-conscious affirmative action was prohibited. My estimates were much, much lower than the estimates provided by the advocates' statistical model. This personal experience led me to the following "insights":
All public policy decision processes should be based on open source data, i.e., on data that is available to everyone from public sources
If a lawsuit or any other kind of public policy decision process requires the use of data that was previously private -- e.g., data in Harvard's application files -- that data should be anonymized and posted on an open source Website in a standard format. This will provide the plaintiffs, defendants, and concerned citizens like me and the readers of this blog with access to the same data.
Then we can all develop informed opinions and make our informed opinions heard if we feel strongly enough about what we have discovered.
Related notes on this blog:
Self-imposed limits on Asian American enrollments at highly selective U.S. colleges and universities ... December 2018
on Saturday, December 08, 2018
TECH Dozens 2018
TECH Dozens -- Week ending Saturday 12/22/18
Anti-Asian American bias, affirmative action, and ...
All public policy decisions should be based on ope...
Self-imposed limits on Asian American enrollments ...
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A Compendium of TM Matters in Malaysia
by Azlina A Khalid
It is commonly known that businesses and companies often undertake brand investment in order to increase their market share, which in turn will further enhance their reputation and goodwill. What is lesser known perhaps is that brand investment has the ability to induce a positive and substantial economic development of a market economy. A 2015 Policy Brief prepared for the European Centre for International Political Economy written by Fredrik Erixon and Maria Salfi, had a cogent discussion on the role of trademarks for a country’s economic development and how building value in trademarks and brands supports this contention.
Fast forward to the present, the International Trademark Association (INTA) in September last year had released the results of an impact study conducted by Frontier Economics across five major ASEAN economies which seemed to substantiate the above point. The impact study report indicated that there was a positive correlation between trademarks and their economic contributions to a country’s GDP, employment and share of exports. Specifically, the data gathered was to show how trademark intensive activities by trademark intensive industries contributed to technological innovation and international business growth. Trademark intensive industries were defined as those industries which file more trademarks than others with an above-average use of trademarks per employee.
Out of the 5 ASEAN countries – Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand – which took part in the study, Malaysia came in at a highly respectable second position with a 30.3% direct contribution to GDP whilst the indirect contributions stood at 60%. Direct contributions were defined in terms of employment, output and value added generated by a particular trademark-intensive industry. Indirect contributions designate the interdependencies between the trademark intensive industries and non-intensive ones.
Amongst the findings, it was noted that 55% of the country’s share of exports were led by trade mark intensive industries that include manufacturing of computers, electronics and related equipment, which in turn make up for about 19% of the country’s total manufacturing value-add. What this means is that the various trade mark intensive industries in Malaysia significantly promote their activities within the business communities, government and the consuming public, all of which led to immense cross sectoral economic growth for the country. Whilst this is something to be proud of, it must be noted that such a high percentage would not be possible if there isn’t any effective protection and enforcement trade mark system made available to trademark and brand owners. In addition to brand investment, businesses and companies from trademark intensive industries ought to have in place a coherent and strategic system of filing trade mark applications and upon registration, proper enforcement of their rights must be ensured.
Last year, the Malaysian IP Office (MyIPO) statistics serve to underscore the results of the impact study. MyIPO received its highest number of trade mark applications filed to date with 41,093 new filings. This was a whopping 58% increase in trademark applications filed within the last decade. The healthy number of trademarks filed last year continue to signify that Malaysia remains an attractive country to invest in, particularly for foreign brand owners and this is reflected in their consistent level of confidence in the country’s trade mark system. In 2007, there were 25,894 trade mark applications with 13,605 applications filed by foreign applicants and 12,289 by the locals. Interestingly, it can be seen that even then there was an almost equal number of filings in both categories of applicants. This trend has continued and last year’s data showed a 10% variance between the foreign applicants with 21,612 trademark applications filed and 19,481 applications filed by local businesses and individuals. This variance suggests that throughout the last decade, more and more local companies are taking proactive measures in obtaining trade mark protection.
At the end of the trademark spectrum is the effectiveness of enforcement for registered marks. It would not mean much to a trademark owner if their registered trademarks cannot be effectively enforced in the face of infringement or passing off issues. There is a dual pronged approach for enforcement here in Malaysia. One would be by way of civil litigation where the brand owners would initiate legal action against perpetrators who they deem are impinging upon their registered rights or common law rights. The other is by way of a criminal sanction in trademark enforcement. The relevant government agency that has been tasked with this responsibility is the Enforcement Unit of the Malaysian Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumerism. Last year, the Enforcement Unit had acted on almost 1500 complaints lodged based on the Trade Description Act 2011 with various raids and seizures being conducted. The most useful tool under the Act is the Trade Description Order (TDO) made available to proprietors of registered trademarks. It is a Court Order that declares any infringing mark or get-up as a false trade description when applied to goods specified in the Order and is an effective enforcement tool for registered brand owners.
Turning to trade mark cases, although there are no available statistics there is a recent Federal Court decision, Low Chi Yong (t/a Reynox Fertichem Industries) v Low Chi Hong & Anor [2018] 1 MLJ 175 which dealt with the issue of whether a registered proprietor was entitled to defend his statutory rights amidst allegations of abandonment. The trademark in question ‘Reynox’ was initially filed by the appellant who is the brother to the first respondent and a shareholder of the second respondent. According to the respondents, the trademark was to be registered under the names of the appellant and the first respondent initially and was later to be transferred to the second respondent. A partnership was also formed by the appellant and the first respondent, which also used the trademark. After the business relationship went south and the appellant left, he claimed for trademark infringement and passing off in respect of the registered goods being liquid fertiliser. The respondents counter claimed that the appellant had consented to the use of the mark through his involvement with the second respondent and alleged an assignment of the registered mark from the appellant to the second respondent which did not follow through.
The High Court allowed the appellant’s claim and dismissed the respondents’ counterclaim. The respondents then appealed to the Court of Appeal where the appeal was allowed and the decision of the High Court was set aside by the Court of Appeal. Hence the present appeal to the Federal Court, the apex of the Malaysian judiciary.
After sifting through the evidence and considering both parties’ legal submissions, the Federal Court held the following:
The appellant had exclusivity over the trademark as it was properly registered under his name at MyIPO. There was no dispute that the consent was granted to the second respondent to distribute the goods bearing the registered trademark but the consent was revoked when the appellant left the second respondent. The evidence also showed that he asserted his ownership by sending various notices to the respondents asking that they cease and desist from using his registered trademark.
Under Section 36(1) of the Trade Marks Act, the fact that a person is registered as the proprietor of a trademark shall be prima facie evidence of the validity of the original registration and any subsequent assignments and/or transmission.
With the registered trademark being valid, the appellant had the exclusive right to use the trademark as well as the right to prevent others, who were using the trademark or any marks similar to it in respect of the registered goods.
The appellant had established a prima facie case of infringement of his registered trademark by the respondents and the actions of the respondents in using the appellant’s trademark without his consent and authorization had in turn led purchasers to believe that the respondents’ products were the same and/or associated with one another.
Under Section 40(1)(dd) of the Trademarks Act, the infringement can be avoided if the appellant at any time had expressly or impliedly consented to the use by any other person. In this instant, the Court found ample evidence to establish that the appellant had sent out various notices to the respondents informing them that he was the sole registered proprietor of the ‘Reynox’ trade mark and that they should refrain from using it without his permission.
On the other hand the Court did not find any evidence of the alleged assignment as raised by the respondents. The Court subsequently confirmed that ownership of the registered trademark resided in the appellant alone.
There was also no evidence found to conclude that the appellant had abandoned his rights in his trade mark. Instead there was ample evidence to establish the opposite.
This case serves to highlight the importance of having proper records insofar as ownership and transfer of ownership of registered and/or pending marks is concerned. This case not only involved siblings but businesses owned by the siblings themselves. The intention of joint ownership for a trademark (allowed in Malaysia) must be clear with the respective documents properly filed at MyIPO. Likewise, any intention of having a mark assigned to another party must be duly reflected in MyIPO’s records. Last but not least is the importance of establishing who the permitted user of a registered trademark is and having it duly recorded at MyIPO. Use by a permitted user is deemed as use of the mark by the registered proprietor himself. It is not often that a trademark appeal receives an audience before the Federal Court as leave to appeal must first be sought and subsequently granted. The clarification on the issue of ownership and the relevant sections pertaining to it is of significant interest in the development of Malaysian trademark case law.
On the legislation front, it is fairly disappointing to note that the amendments to the Trademarks Act 1976 have yet to be passed by Parliament. The amendments to the law are necessary for Malaysia to accede to the Protocol relating to the Madrid Agreement concerning the international registration of trademarks. The accession to the Madrid Protocol was a part of the ASEAN Economic Community obligation and commitment to the ASEAN Blueprint 2025. At press time, Malaysia and Myanmar remain the only two countries that have yet to join Madrid Protocol. In all fairness, all the relevant preparation had been undertaken by MyIPO in terms of upgrading their infrastructure, clearing their backlog, sending their personnel for the relevant training as well as initiating a new international trade mark division. The rest, as they say are in the hand of the lawmakers.
In summary, one can safely conclude that it has been a highly encouraging year for Malaysia on the trademarks front. Trademark filings has reached its highest number in the last 10 years. The released report on the impact study conducted underlined the fact that this country has a relatively buoyant economy amongst the rest in ASEAN, driven by trademark intensive industries through their trademark intensive activities. Trademark enforcement and protection efforts continue to be positive and although the overall value of all seizures were not significantly huge (less than USD 5,000) the number of cases display the government’s continued commitment in combatting IP piracy and supporting bona fide trade mark owners. Perhaps the icing on the cake would be for Malaysia to finally join the Madrid Protocol but this remains to be seen. It is certainly hoped that this will come to fruition before the end of 2018.
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On 01 July 2018, the Intellectual Property Corporation of Malaysia (MyIPO) commenced a Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) pilot program with ...
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Chicago: The Quintessential American City
John C Thomas
Chicago is sometimes called “The Quintessential American City,” because of its central location and influence on American and world culture. Many foreign visitors tend to overlook Chicago as a destination because of its distance from the coasts and reputation as a working town. But to really understand America, Chicago is a must-see destination.
At the dawn of the 19th Century, Chicago was nothing more than a marshy fur-trading settlement at the mouth of a tiny rivulet draining into Lake Michigan. By the end of the century, it was the second most populous city in the Western Hemisphere-- responsible for the invention of the skyscraper, meat packing, the international labor movement, and the modern supply chain. The rise of Chicago mirrored the growth of the United States from a crude agrarian nation into an industrialized World power.
Located on the banks of North America’s Great Lakes, few other cities in the world have integrated urban life with the water as well as Chicago. The skyscrapers and high rise apartment buildings along Lake Michigan provide Chicagoans with stunning water views, and large parks along the shore offer recreational treats for residents and visitors.
Chicago is a more affordable destination than many other American cities, and offers outstanding cultural amenities. The Art Institute of Chicago, The Second City, a thriving small theater scene, architectural tours, and music festivals are primary cultural attractions that rival any in the world. The city’s many residential neighborhoods are like unique small villages within a city, and often have strong ethnic and cultural identities as friendly arrival points for immigrants from all over the world.
Chicago is known for its architecture and use of the lakeshore and river. | Source
The Chicago Jazz Festival and other music festivals are free in Grant Park every summer and attracts top musical acts. | Source
International immigrants and African Americans from the South made Chicago an originator of many popular music styles, including jazz, blues, gospel, rock and roll, and House music. The city hosts many free summer music festivals and is home to the Lollapalooza and Pitchfork music festivals.
Chicago sports teams-- although not always at the top of the standings-- are among the most popular attractions in town. The city boasts two Major League Baseball teams (the National League's Chicago Cubs and the American League's Chicago White Sox), the NFL's Chicago Bears, the NBA's Chicago Bulls, and the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks. Just outside the city limits are horseracing, the MLS Chicago Fire, and minor league hockey and baseball. Within the city limits are four Division I colleges, and the Big 10's Northwestern University is just across the city's border in Evanston.
When visiting Chicago, some of the best places to stay are along Michigan Avenue in the heart of downtown. From the elegant Drake Hotel on the north end of the avenue to the massive Hilton Chicago on the south, there are more than a dozen hotels along Michigan Avenue within waking distance from top attractions, shopping, restaurants and transit.
Most Chicagoans are friendly, proud and knowledgeable about their city’s history, and they’re often eager to give advice on places of interest and things to do. If you’re thinking about visiting the United States, “The Quintessential American City” should be a top destination to consider.
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“Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.”
Tag: human genome
A Wise Moratorium
Editing the human genome sounds promising, it points to being able to eliminate or alter genetic diseases and do it in a way that can be inherited. Imagine being a parent and the carrier of a disease, wouldn’t you want your child to be protected. But editing the human genome has grave consequences we have not yet identified. For example the same gene editing technique could also foster beauty or intelligence. Ethicists who’ve been aware of these issues for decades, are beginning to tackle the potential problems. Scientists do too. Actually genes have been edited on animals, but not yet on humans, yet it is believed that this could be possible soon. The United States and most European countries already have some safeguards but many countries don’t. Since the technique could change the human genome for future generations and in essence alter the course of evolution, many are concerned. That is why a group of scientists including the inventors of the gene editing technique have written a paper published in Science magazine calling for a worldwide moratorium on its use. George Q. Daley, a stem cell biologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and a member of the group asking for the moratorium succinctly summarized the consequences of the technique,” It raises the most fundamental of issues about how we are going to take the dramatic step of modifying our own germline and in a sense take control of our genetic destiny, which raises enormous peril for humanity.”
It’s comforting that with those scientists who at present know the most about the technique, wisdom is prevailing.
Author Danielle LevyPosted on March 29, 2015 November 7, 2017 Categories Social Conscience, ValuesTags ethical concerns of genetic engineering, ethics, evolution, gene editing, genetic destiny, human genome1 Comment on A Wise Moratorium
“In the world to come I shall not be asked, ‘Why were you not Moses?’ I shall be asked, ‘Why were you not Zusya?’”
~Rabbi Zusya
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Investors > News & Events > Press Releases > Press Release Details
Veeco Introduces ContourGT-K0 Surface Metrology System
Download this Press Release (PDF 6 KB)
Cost-Effective, Easy-to-Use 3D Optical Profiler for Research & Production
Plainview, NY, May 26, 2010 -- Veeco Instruments Inc. (Nasdaq: VECO), a leading global provider of precision instrumentation and metrology solutions for scientific and industrial markets, today announced a new low-cost member of its ContourGT TM family of non-contact, 3D optical surface profilers. The ContourGT-K0 Surface Metrology System combines streamlined architecture and functionality with significantly improved measurement and computing hardware and software, making it the industry's most advanced and easiest-to-use low-cost, 3D optical surface profiler.
"With its intuitive user interface and improved throughput capabilities, our ContourGT product line is being very well received by our industrial and research customers," said Mark R. Munch, Ph.D., Executive Vice President, Veeco Metrology & Instrumentation. "By adding the low-cost K0 version, we have brought top metrology performance and ease-of-use to the more cost-sensitive QA/QC production and R&D applications, including precision machining, medical, printing, high-brightness LED and solar."
Ross Q. Smith, Vice President and General Manager, Veeco Optical Industrial Metrology, added, "As the precision manufacturing industry pursues ever tightening tolerances and quality assurance criteria, we see a rapidly growing market for simple-to-operate, high-performance, yet low-cost, non-contact, quantitative 3D surface profilers that can replace traditional, 2D contact-based systems. The ContourGT-K0 epitomizes this combination, and we expect it to be the industry's benchmark in this category."
About ContourGT-K0
The tabletop ContourGT-K0 is the entry-level model of the ContourGT product line, which includes a range of profilers designed to meet the technical requirements and budgets for virtually every type of production and R&D precision surface metrology application. The systems utilize patented, higher brightness dual-LED illumination combined with superior vertical resolution to provide greatly improved sensitivity and stability, enabling precision non-contact 3D surface metrology in difficult applications and environments that are challenging for other white light interferometry systems. The entire ContourGT Family also features Veeco's new Vision64 TM Operation and Analysis Software and the industry's most intuitive, modular user interface to deliver user-level-customization capabilities for the widest possible range of surface profiling metrology applications. For more information about the ContourGT-K0 or other ContourGT models or to schedule a demo, please visit www.veeco.com/ContourGT , email metrologyinfo@veeco.com , or call +1 (520) 741-1044.
Veeco Instruments Inc. designs, manufactures, markets and services enabling solutions for customers in the HB-LED, solar, data storage, semiconductor, scientific research and industrial markets. We have leading technology positions in our three businesses: LED & Solar Process Equipment, Data Storage Process Equipment, and Metrology Instruments. Veeco's product development, marketing, engineering and manufacturing facilities are located in New York, New Jersey, California, Colorado, Arizona, Massachusetts and Minnesota. Global sales and service offices are located throughout the U.S., Europe, Japan and Asia Pacific. http://www.veeco.com/
To the extent that this news release discusses expectations or otherwise makes statements about the future, such statements are forward-looking and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made. These factors include the risks discussed in the Business Description and Management's Discussion and Analysis sections of Veeco's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2009 and in our subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and press releases.Veeco does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances after the date of such statements.
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Posts Tagged ‘immigration’
Pic Credit: Neil Moralee/Flickr
This is a cross-post from Sedaa
A much-awaited report which contains no big surprises received reactions that were entirely predictable.
From segregation and misogyny, to the child grooming gangs and Sharia councils, Dame Louise Casey’s lengthy, evidence-based report pulls no punches.
Towns and cities with high Muslim populations, such as Oldham, Rochdale, Blackburn and Bradford are mentioned as places of concern.
Some of them are areas with large numbers of people who came from Pakistani-administered Kashmir, particularly the rural region of Mirpur. They came to the former mill-towns which now suffer from industrial decline and high levels of deprivation.
Parents still ship their children ‘back home’ to get married, creating ghettos and a “first generation in every generation problem”.
Immigration itself is not a bad thing. The problem is when large numbers of immigrants arrive into areas where there are already large numbers of people from the same background. There is less of an incentive to integrate and learn English if most people in your neighbourhood are going to be from the same village in Pakistan or Bangladesh.
Last week’s Policy Exchange survey “Unsettled Belonging” showed Muslims overwhelmingly identify with Britain. And there is a hope that Muslims will become more liberal and secular. But if Muslims choose to live in areas with a high Muslim population, those who are more liberal or non religious will find it difficult to express their views openly, for fear of being attacked. Islamists benefit from this type of environment, as they can say they are trying to cater for the growing Muslim population – remember the Trojan Horse scandal in Birmingham.
Of course, some have suggested that “white people need to integrate too”. The report says:
“In recent decades, it appears that in some respects, rather than becoming more of a classless society, sections of white working class Britain have become more isolated from the rest of the country and the rest of the white British population.”
White British boys are falling behind students from other ethnic backgrounds, which will no doubt only help foster the narrative that no one cares about the white population. It partly explain why we have seen Britain voting to leave the European Union and the rise of parties such as UKIP.
In Oldham, two schools with one dominant ethnic group were merged to form one large school. The majority white Counthill School and majority Pakistani Breezehill School became the Waterhead Academy. Though the school is not doing so well academically it is helping bridge the divide among two communities.
If this model can be replicated then this can help community cohesion, as secondary schools tend to be places where young people from different backgrounds will mix. But there is no point in the Government talking about the need to end segregation if it is continuing to approve the creation of faith schools.
The report also finds – again, to no one’s surprise – that Muslims tend to marry spouses from abroad, particularly Pakistan.
But even if those people marry their fellow Brits, it is more likely to be someone from their “own community” – that is to say, someone who is either related to them or has links to the same village/town in their parents’ country of origin. So communities are hardly becoming more diverse.
Dame Louise also mentions Sharia ‘courts’ and the fact that many Muslim women are in unregistered marriages, which leaves them vulnerable. Critics of the report claim Muslim women are unfairly targeted in the review. Let’s admit it. Muslim women do face more barriers – mostly from their own communities.
When Muslim women themselves are saying that they are restricted by their own spouses or families, then why is it all being dismissed as being ‘Islamophobic’? When Muslim – and south Asian women in general – used to speak out against forced marriages, or African women were speaking out against female genital mutilation, were they also being racist and ‘Islamophobic’?
An important part of the review, which has been missed by most, is the reference to Prevent, which was introduced following the July 7, 2005 attacks on London as part of the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy CONTEST.
Dame Louise talks about the anti-Prevent lobby who “appear to have an agenda to turn British Muslims against Britain”. The report states:
“These individuals and organisations claim to be advocating on behalf of Muslims and protecting them from discrimination. We repeatedly invited people we met who belonged to these groups, or who held similarly critical views, to suggest alternative approaches. We got nothing in return.”
Well that’s a surprise…
The report tackles the myths behind some of the stories which were very critical of Prevent.
Dame Louise writes about the infamous “terrorist house” case, in which Lancashire Police were reported to have interviewed a pupil referred to Prevent, after he had simply misspelled “terraced house” as “terrorist house” in a class exercise.
In fact, the pupil had also written that “I hate it when my uncle hits me”. The teacher quite appropriately and acting in the best interests of the child, raised a concern. A social worker and neighbourhood police officer then visited the family and concluded that no further action was required. No referral to Prevent was ever made. No Prevent officers were involved and Lancashire Police rightly maintain that they and the school acted responsibly and proportionately.
In an earlier case in May 2015, the parents of a 14 year-old boy started legal action after their son was questioned following a French lesson in which he had been talking about “eco-terrorists”. After the lesson, he was reported to have been taken out of class and asked whether he was affiliated with ISIS. His parents sought a Judicial Review, saying he had been discriminated against because of his Muslim background.
The truth is that the pupil was never referred to Prevent or Child Safeguarding (nor removed from the class), and there was no police involvement. A concern about the boy was correctly raised by a teacher to the school’s Designated Child Protection Officer, who spoke to the pupil in an interview two days later which included asking whether he had “heard of Isis”. The Judicial Review was thrown out of court as totally without merit.
Yet the latter is still used as an excuse to bash Prevent and the boy’s mother, Ifhat Smith, still tells this story to anyone who will listen, despite her dubious links.
It is important that we discuss the issues mentioned in the report and the problems with segregation and mass immigration, rather than denouncing it all as ‘racist’. Indeed, some Muslim commentators have come out with the usual accusations of racism and Islamophobia; they are only interested in being defensive rather than actually coming up with any solutions.
No wonder we are having the same debate today as we were ten years ago. We’ve had similar reports in the past and I have no doubt we will have more in the future, saying the same things. There is little point in recommending what should happen now because it will only fall on deaf ears. Until there is a real political will to actually do something then nothing will change. In the meantime, I await the next report.
Tagged with bradford, British Muslims, casey report, casey review, child grooming gangs UK, community leaders, culture, immigration, integration, Integration Hub, islam, islamism, mirpur, multiculturalism, oldham, pakistani, Pakistani communities, Policy Exchange, prevent agenda, Rochdale, segregation, sharia councils, South Asian communities, trojan horse scandal, uk, UncategorisedBlackburn, waterhead academy oldham
Integration: whose responsibility is it?
Originally published for The Backbencher on 16/12/12
FOLLOWING the release of the 2011 census, it was inevitable that immigration and integration were going to be subjects of great debate.
Earlier this week, the Labour party leader Ed Miliband, speaking in south London, described his enthusiasm for ethnic diversity in the UK, while claiming that ‘too little’ has been done to integrate people within British society.
“Some people say that what we should aim for is assimilation whereby people who have come here do so only on the condition that they abandon their culture. People can be proudly, patriotically British without abandoning their cultural roots and distinctiveness.
But there is another idea we should also reject: the belief that people can simply live side by side in their own communities, respecting each other but living separate lives, protected from hatreds but never building a common bond – never learning to appreciate one another. We cannot be comfortable with separation. It blocks opportunities, leaving people at the margins. And it breeds ignorance, suspicion and prejudice. Instead, we must think of the home we build together in all its richness, variety, diversity.
With an immigration system (under Labour) that allowed two million people to come to the UK over ten years, there is a degree of anxiety about Britain’s cultural identity and the levels of immigration.”
The issue of identity becomes even more complex when one learns that up to two million people in the UK are mixed race. Is this important for integration? Certainly: US scholars consider intermarriage rates as the gold standard of integration due to the intimacy and social implications.”
Why is your dad brown and your uncle is white?
A friend of mine, Omar Mehtab, who lives in Ilford, grew up in a mixed and diverse background. His maternal grandfather, an Indian Muslim, married a Pakistani Hindu woman, while his paternal grandfather, a Pakistani Muslim, married a German-Polish Catholic woman. Furthermore, his Hindu uncle married a Seventh-day Adventist Brazilian woman.
Growing up, he said, he never noticed the differences in the family – as he rightly pointed out, children aren’t born racist or prejudiced. “The only time I noticed the difference is when someone asked me, why is your dad brown and your uncle is white,” he said. As well as this, he went to a school that had a mix of pupils from diverse backgrounds. “I’m glad I’ve had this,” he said. “It’s given me different cultural and religious viewpoints. My generation is a product of a mixed environment – we love it.”
Many friends and acquaintances of mine have said something similar – that the reason they are so open-minded and well integrated is down to, a) – their own open-minded and diverse families, and b) – their own willingness to integrate and mix with a diverse group of people.
Which brings me to my next point – to what extent are families to blame for this? As pointed out earlier, racism is taught; no one is born racist or prejudiced.
The 2001 UK Census showed that people from South Asian backgrounds were the least likely of the minority ethnic groups to be married to someone from a different ethnic group. Only 6 per cent of Indians, 4 per cent of Pakistanis, and 3 per cent of Bangladeshis had married someone outside the Asian group.
This could possibly change in the next few years, who knows, but I believe that there are certain prejudices and barriers there that have been long-held by the elders. Although some of them are no longer with us, the subsequent generation absorbed some of those views – you are a product of your environment.
As the study by Shamit Saggar and Will Somerville shows, there are several factors that drive successful immigrant outcomes:
“One of these is proximity to…buoyant local labour markets. In London, the professional service and corporate business sectors have been important in generating demand for highly educated and skilled employees. This signal has been received and reflected in middle-class Indian educational patterns… This has not been seen in the case of many Pakistani immigrants, whose settlement patterns were concentrated in declining heavy industrial areas of northern England.”
Poverty and deprivation lead to a lack of integration
Poverty and deprivation are major factors which lead to a lack of integration, and in areas with high levels of deprivation, there will be high levels of tension between the different ethnic groups, and people will live in clusters and blocks, not really mixing with people of a different background to theirs.
The Pakistani immigrants who first came to the UK to work in the mills brought with them their culture and their way of life. Subsequently marrying off their British born children to their nieces and nephews from their village abroad has continued this mentality. This trickles down to the children. (Forgive me for discussing Pakistanis mainly, but this is my background and a group that I’m more familiar with)
Lejla Kuric, a 36-year-old businesswoman in Manchester, originally from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, has faced racism from both English and Pakistani people alike, for being married to a British-born Pakistani man. Although his family accepted her without any objections, others have not been as tolerant. She said: “On one occasion, a group of Asian lads had a go at my husband at the Trafford Centre, saying, ‘why, oh why is he with a white woman?’”
Of course there will be idiots, and downright vicious people everywhere. But there are people out there who will hold such views because of the way they have been brought up – certainly with some Asian children, they will pick up such prejudice from their parents, who will no doubt talk about the ‘shame’ and ‘dishonour’ of marrying someone from outside their ethnic group.
“We don’t like pakis, they smell”
When I was in primary school, being the only Asian girl in school at the time was challenging at times but the overall experience was fine. The children did come out with racist terms, but I do not believe they were racist – I believe they were simply repeating what they had learned from their parents. For example, in class one day, a boy sat next to me said, “We don’t like pakis, they smell…but we like you Iram, you’re okay!”
Of course I was okay (actually, no, I’m fabulous!), because they knew me, they were my friends. Which got me thinking, how many other ‘pakis’ would they think were ‘okay’ after they had bothered to get to know them?
Although Lejla was abused with terms such as “Eastern-European c*nt,” “immigrant,” “white paki,” and “guest in this country” that has “no right to comment on British politics”, her experience of Britain overall has been pleasant.
She said: “In general I found British people open, friendly and tolerant and I found Britain multicultural and a very tolerant society. This meant it wasn’t difficult for me to accept the British identity, and preserve my Bosnian identity at the same time.
Again, we see this issue of identity cropping up again. How do immigrants preserve the identity of the homeland while maintaining their British identity too? If they are to live in the UK peacefully, tolerating other people, which aspects of their culture do they retain, and which do they abolish? Additionally, whose responsibility is it to integrate – is it the role of the host community or the immigrants?
Language is a gateway to a culture
Omar believes that while it is the job of the immigrants, he also thinks that English people, in general, are not really aware of other people and cultures. Part of this could be down to the school education system. Apart from Ireland, the United Kingdom is the only EU country where learning a language at school is not compulsory. As a result, only 44% of school pupils took a modern language GCSE in 2009. The figures are even more dire at A-level: fewer than 5% of all A-level entrants sat a language exam last year. After all, language is a gateway to a culture.
Education and awareness should begin at an early age. But if parents are prejudiced, is it then the school’s responsibility to tackle such prejudices and allow children to become more open minded? There are certain schools where 90% of the pupils will be of one ethnic group – although schools are reflective of their areas (in a majority Asian district, the majority of the children in that school will be Asian), there should be a policy which should tackle this.
In Oldham, two schools were closed down to merge into one big academy school in order to tackle the issue of segregation between Asian and white children (though many politicians still do not acknowledge that Asians segregate themselves from other Asians too, e.g. Bangladeshis against Pakistanis).
It is difficult to say whether this project has been successful yet, but it might be a case of too little, too late. The damage may already have been done, which is why early intervention is necessary.
There is so much more that I could say, but time is of the essence (and my editor must be furious!), but please do share your thoughts and opinions on what we, as a nation, can do to integrate better and educate our young.
Posted in BME, culture, social, south asian, UK
Tagged with 2011 census, Britain, ed miliband, immigration, labour party, mixed race, oldham, oldham academy
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[Funding alert] Skills verification startup Indorse raises $6.5M to expand in India
Rashi Varshney ( )
Yourstory 20 June 2019
Singapore-based skills verification startup Indorse has raised funding of $6.5 million from Brand Capital, the ad-for-equity investment arm of The Times Group. This includes an initial investment of $2 million as a convertible note, with a valuation of $15 million, with the option of a further tranche of $4.5 million, the startup said in a statement.
Indorse was co-founded by Gaurang Torvekar, Avadhoot Kulkarni, David Moskowitz, and Dipesh Sukhani in 2017 in Singapore. The company uses blockchain-powered platform to assess and verify skills, expertise, and achievements of candidates searching for new job roles, with an initial focus on the coding segment.
The Indorse platform helps businesses evolve from sorting through hundreds of applicants to making informed hires within days, using a shortlist of candidates proven to have the right skills for the role, claims the company in a statement.
Blockchain adoption will increase rapidly in 2019
The startup said it will use the fresh capital to expand and build its business in India. Gaurang Torvekar, CEO and Co-Founder of Indorse, said this transaction will help Indorse to build brand and become a major dependable source for employers seeking candidates with the right skills in India and South-East Asia coding skills market.
“By leveraging the experience of human experts across the world, Indorse provides companies with reliable and actionable insights about candidates. We are raising the bar in terms of quality appraisal of tech talent, while substantially reducing the direct and indirect costs of the hiring process. Candidates can benefit from ‘indorsement’ by proving they can do the job they’re applying for — regardless of their CV’s content," Gaurang said.
Indorse has already worked with both small and large tech companies in finding suitable talent. Most recently, it conducted a tech recruitment event to assess coding and data science candidates for South-East Asia’s biggest ride-hailing firm, Grab. Within six months, Indorse claims to have assessed over 2,000 tech candidates and 7,000 code reviews.
This round of funding is the most recent in a series of investments in the company since inception. In 2017, Indorse completed a fundraising round, which reached $9 million, allowing the team to focus on building a working product. Prior to that, UK's investment and advisory firm, Coinsilium Group, made seed investment of $450,000 (Singapore dollars) for a 10 percent equity stake in the business.
Ranksheet- An Online Assessment, Certification and Jobs Portal; for both Employers, and Job See...
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Jun 18, 2011 | 01:11
Syrians rally against Assad
June 17 - Protests erupt in Syria despite a military crackdown and the announcement that a despised figure in the president's family is stepping down. Deborah Gembara reports.
In Syria --- a fresh wave of protests against the government. This comes despite a military crackdown by President Bashar al-Assad. Amateur video which could not be independently verified by Reuters shows protesters in the city of Homs, taking shelter from gunfire. Similar demonstrations are reported to have taken place throughout the country. Syria has been rocked by more than three months of protests. Much of that anger has been directed at this man -- Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of the president. The billionaire tycoon runs the country's largest cellphone company and an airline. Protesters say he's a poster boy for corruption. On Thursday, he announced he is stepping down from his businesses to focus on charity. It's a move the government hopes we'll quell some of the unrest. Deborah Gembara, Reuters.
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July 6, 2019 / 12:50 AM / 13 days ago
Exclusive: U.S. clears SoftBank's $2.25 billion investment in GM-backed Cruise
Alexandra Alper, Greg Roumeliotis
(Reuters) - Cruise, a U.S. self-driving vehicle company majority-owned by General Motors Co, told Reuters on Friday that a U.S. national security panel approved a $2.25 billion investment in the firm by Japan’s SoftBank Corp.
A close up of a Bolt EV car is seen during a media event by Cruise, GM’s autonomous car unit, in San Francisco, California, U.S. November 28, 2017. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage/Files
SoftBank has come under increasing U.S. scrutiny over its ties to Chinese firms in the face of an escalating trade and technology war between Washington and Beijing. It is in the process of raising its second $100 billion investment vehicle, dubbed Vision Fund, after deploying its first one of equal size.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews deals for potential national security concerns, approved the investment based on fresh assurances that Cruise’s technology would be completely off limits to SoftBank, a source familiar with the matter said.
A SoftBank spokesman declined to comment. The Treasury Department, which leads CFIUS, did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
The approval unlocks a seat for SoftBank on Cruise’s board, formalizing its oversight, and cements key financing for Cruise, which has raised $7.25 billion in capital since last year, the company said.
“Today’s news is another important step toward achieving our goal to develop and deploy self-driving vehicles at massive scale,” Cruise CEO Dan Ammann said in a statement to Reuters.
However, approval for the deal did not always appear certain as CFIUS scrutinized it closely, according to two people close to the deal.
The $2.25 billion investment was unveiled by SoftBank in May 2018 amid a wave of investments by the Japanese technology and telecommunications conglomerate in artificial intelligence, data analytics, financial services and self-driving cars.
The investment raised red flags with CFIUS because SoftBank invests in numerous mobility units, some based in China, and encourages companies it invests in to share information.
CFIUS was especially concerned about SoftBank’s co-investments with Tencent Holdings Ltd, a Chinese social media and gaming giant, and its investment in China ride-hailing firm Didi, which it fears could take technology from Cruise, sources said.
The committee, emboldened by a law last year aimed at strengthening the inter-agency panel, has flexed its muscles increasingly against Chinese companies as Beijing and Washington remain locked in a heated trade and technology row.
Reuters reported that Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd has been seeking to sell Grindr LLC, the popular gay dating app, after CFIUS said its ownership posed a national security risk.
CFIUS halted a plan last year by Ant Financial, owned by the chairman of China’s internet conglomerate Alibaba, to acquire MoneyGram International Inc.
The Cruise deal was structured to allow $900 million of the investment to be disbursed initially, with the remainder provided once Cruise AVs are ready for commercial deployment and contingent on regulatory approval. The two tranches would combine to give SoftBank a nearly 20 percent stake in Cruise.
However, the Japanese firm separately announced a joint investment with GM, T. Rowe Price, and Honda of $1.15 billion earlier this year, further boosting its stake.
Softbank’s investment, followed by Honda’s announcement in October that it will pour $2.75 billion into Cruise, is still one of the biggest and most high-profile investments in self-driving technology to date.
Its Vision Fund, the world’s largest technology fund, unveiled a $1.5 billion investment in China’s top used car platform, Chehauduo Group, in February. Reuters reported in December that the same fund was hiring an investment team based in China to boost its presence in one of the world’s most vibrant tech markets.
It is not the first time SoftBank has gone through a protracted CFIUS review. It has had to accept U.S. restrictions on how it runs some of its companies, including wireless carrier Sprint Corp and investment firm Fortress Investment Group.
SoftBank lost its claim to two seats on the board of Uber Inc when the ride-hailing giant floated in the stock market in May. SoftBank never received permission for the board seats from CFIUS following an agreement in 2017 to invest $9 billion in Uber.
The autonomous vehicle industry could revolutionize transportation but faces engineering, safety and regulatory challenges, as well as skepticism among potential users.
GM Cruise and Alphabet Inc’s Waymo are often described as leading the pack of technology and auto companies competing to create self-driving cars and integrate them into ride services fleets.
Additional Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Paul Tait & Shri Navaratnam
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Home Edu Business News India’s First Global Consortium to Unveil Collective Diagnostic Strength Of Four Countries
India’s First Global Consortium to Unveil Collective Diagnostic Strength Of Four Countries
Bangalore: Aggregating the fragmented diagnostic sector of the country, four nations joined forces to launch India’s first global Pathology Laboratory Consortium- Neuberg Diagnostics- today in Bangalore. Founded by the renowned healthcare entrepreneur, Dr. G.S.K.Velu, the international alliance brings together leading laboratories from India, Sri Lanka, South Africa and UAE under one umbrella, making it one among the top laboratory chains of the country from the day one of its inception, both in footprints and revenue.
Neuberg Diagnostics (Neuberg literally translates to New City or New Neighbourhood apart from also being the namesake in honour of the Father of Modern Biochemistry, Carl Neuberg), was conceived with the goal to erase geographical borders and make the world of healthcare one, bringing advanced diagnostics affordable to people across the globe. The conglomerate, which has a combined diagnostic expertise of over two centuries, is an alliance of top laboratories like Anand Diagnostic Laboratory, Supratech Micropath, Ehrlich lab, Global labs and Minerva Labs, which have already made their presence in their respective countries and states such as Karnataka, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, South Africa & UAE
Neuberg will have 3 world class global reference laboratories located in Bangalore, Ahmedabad, and Durban (South Africa) carrying out advanced range of testing using new generation In vitro diagnostics techniques along with total lab automation & big data analytics tools supported by robust world-class laboratory information system.
These laboratories will have collective annual revenue of INR 400 crs with the formation of the new entity. Neuberg Diagnostics will operate under one corporate team headed by Dr. G.S.K.Velu as the Chairman, Mr. Anand K, will assume the role of Chief Executive Officer, while Dr. Sujay Prasad will be the Medical Director and Dr. Sandip Shah will be the Executive Director. The Technical Board will comprise of top pathologists like Dr. Jayaram, Dr. Bhagyam Nair, Dr. Lorna Madurai, and Dr. Bhavini Shah among others.
The global brand was launched in the presence of the esteemed guests, Ms. Anupriya Patel, Minister of State in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, Dr Rajitha Senaratne, Minister of Health, Nutrition & indigenous Medicine, Sri Lanka, Dr. Awatif Juma al Bahar, Medical director of Dubai Health Authority, UAE and Prof. Salim S Abdool Karim, Director of CAPRISA & Pro vice-chancellor, University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa along with the senior management officials of the brand.
With full throttle growth expected to take up Indian diagnostics in the near term, the new generation consortium will pool in cutting-edge advanced diagnostics technology and actively perform 5000 plus variety of pathological tests, promoting prevention and early diagnosis, thereby empowering the Indian healthcare consumer. In conjunction with providing comprehensive laboratory services, covering all areas of laboratory medicine, Neuberg will combine conventional pathology testing, new generation laboratory techniques and basic Radiology & imaging techniques for enhanced patient outcomes.
Dr. G.S.K.Velu, Chairman of Neuberg Diagnostics said, “The aim of the partnership is to develop a new shared services model for the provision of pathology services in the Middle East, Africa including west and South India. Neuberg Diagnostics is built on the vision to provide modern, innovative and sustainable services that deliver world-class lab facilities with the focus on high-end technology and services like Genomics and Proteomics to doctors and patients alike.”
Anand.K, CEO of Neuberg Diagnostics added, “An association with the pathology experts will lead to the implementation of best practices, adoption of new technology and convert research into innovation, benefiting the medical community and ultimately improving patient care.”
Speaking about the new venture, Ms. Anupriya Patel, Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, India said, “Indian healthcare delivery is growing by leaps and bounds. A global consortium is therefore set to be a major platform to introduce new generation pathology services to the sector, thereby increasing the quality and affordability of the country’s healthcare services.”
Dr. Hemantha Beneragama, Ministry of Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine – Sri Lanka added, “This global alliance with the top pathology laboratories will help in strengthening our relationships with the neighboring nations. Leveraging the expertise of world-class pathology brands, we look forward to leveling the existing gaps in our healthcare system.”
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Dark Knight Rises Aircraft Gallery
Filed to: GalleryFiled to: Gallery
Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopter
What is it: An advanced attack helicopter that's been in service since the mid-1980s but remains a force to be reckoned with. It has a 30 mm chain gun with 1,200 rounds as well as rockets, missiles and substantial armor.
How it's like The Bat: If Batman didn't have The Bat, odds are, he'd fly an Apache. Aside from also having rotors, seems pretty comparable to Bruce Wayne's new ride in terms of firepower. The cockpit design is very similar as well; like the Apache, The Bat's passengers sit tandem, one in front of the other.
Harrier Jump Jet
What is it: The Harrier is capable of taking off vertically, eliminating the need for a runway and making it deployable in cramped areas or aircraft carriers. Thrusters rotate downward, pushing the fighter jet off the ground and into the air.
How it's like The Bat: Batman's new toy may technically be a helicopter because it has rotors, but it takes some functional cues from the Harrier. The Bat also performs some pretty crazy aerobatic maneuvers, making it fly more like a fighter jet than a helicopter.
Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey
What is it: A tilt rotor aircraft that is a fusion of plane and helicopter, it uses its twin rotors to perform vertical takeoffs. The Osprey has been controversial due to its excessive development costs and safety record, but it has proven useful for many applications, including search and rescue and combat.
How it's like The Bat: The Bat also incorporates elements of both planes and helicopters, and has the same level of versatility as the Osprey. It's also probably just as expensive.
Bell Eagle Eye
What is it: Another tilt rotor like the Osprey - another Bell product with which it shares some design features - the Eagle Eye has two huge rotors on either side. Unlike the Osprey, the Eagle Eye is an unmanned aerial vehicle, also called a drone. It's highly maneuverable, like a plane, and meant to go into the most dangerous areas in the world so that human beings don't have to.
How it's like The Bat: Like the Eagle Eye, The Bat flies thanks to the two rotors on either side of its body.
Sikorsky Cypher UAV
What is it: The Cypher is a drone that flies thanks to rotors enclosed in a donut-like housing. If you've ever played Metal Gear Solid 2, you've shot at plenty of these.
How it's like The Bat: The Bat also has enclosed rotors like the Cypher, and with its autopilot feature it could also be considered a drone of sorts.
Photos credit Getty Images, the U.S. Government
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A bakers dozen of English verse from 1631-702
Charles Cotton 1630-1687
William Davenant, 1606-1668
Sir John Davies 1569-1626
John Donne. 1571/2-1631
Michael Drayton 1563-1631
Lord Brooke Fluke Greville 1554-1628
George Herbert (1593-1633)
Benjamin Jonson ca. 1572-1637
Nicholas Ling, ed fl. ca. 1599
Sir John Suckling 1609-1642
Robert Wild 1609-1679
118F Charles Cotton 1630-1687
Poems On several Occasions. Written By Charles Cotton, Esq;
London: Printed for Tho. Basset, at the George in Fleet-street; Will. Hinsman and Tho. Fox, in Westminster-Hall, 1689 $2,000
Octavo 7.2 x 4.5 inches A4, B-Z8, Aa-Zz8. First edition. Bound in full contemporary calf ruled in blind a good unsophisticated copy. “Another oddly isolated and under-valued poet is Charles Cotton, whose posthumous volume of Poems on Several Occasions (1689) appears to have aroused little contemporary interest, and who was probably little known by the time of Addison and Pope, except for his burlesque poems and The Wonders of the Peak. Yet there is more and better poetry in the 1689 volume than is to be found in any other minor poet of the Restoration: if this was not recognized at the time it must have been because Cotton’s natural vein was out of fashion. There was still a public for the natural that was at the same time low; but by 1689 the polite reader expected a good deal more sophistication and artificiality than Cotton usually gave him. He had to wait until the beginning of the nineteenth century for genuine recognition; and then Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Lamb testified freely to the pleasure his poetry gave them.” (Sutherland)
Wing C-6389; TC II, 254; Grolier, W-P 215; Pforzheimer 221; Hazlit I, 1903.Hayword English Poetry Catalogue, 133
655G William Davenant, 1606-1668
The Works of Sir William Davenant Kt, Consisting of those which were formerly Printed, and those which he design’d for the Press: Now Published out of the Authors Originall Copies.
London: Henry Herringman, 1673 $2,500
Folio, 12 3⁄4 X 7 1⁄2 inches . First Edition
π1 2π2 A-3D4 3E2; Aa-Ppp4, Aaaa-Oooo4
Bound with Portrait of Davenant by
Faithorne. An unusually fine, fresh, wide-
margined copy, with a fine impression of
the portrait. Bound in full contemporary
calf with nicely gilt spine. With the
Berland bookplate. The First
Collected Edition, with prefatory material
by Hobbes, ‘The answer of Mr. Hobbes to
Sr. William D’Avenant’s preface before
Gondibert’, and poems by Waller and
Cowley. Several of the plays originally
published in blank verse are here printed
for the first time, converted into prose.
The volume also includes first printings of
‘The Playhouse to be Let’, ‘Law Against Lovers’, ‘News from Plymouth’, ‘The Fair Favourite’, ‘The Distresses’, and ‘The Siege’. The posthumous collection was published under the watchful eye of “Lady Mary” D’Avenant. The poems reflect the attitudes of the Cavalier poets and the received tradition of earlier poets, particularly Shakespeare, Jonson, and Donne. She no doubt also insisted on the fine portrait frontispiece restoring her husband’s missing nose, which he had lost through “illness” in 1638.
Wing D320
109F Sir John Davies 1569-1626
The Original, Nature a Nosce teipsum
London: W[illiam] Rogers 1697 $3,000
Octavo A8,b8,B-H8 First Tate Edition Bound in full early calf , it is a nice copy with spine label. Sir John Davies (not to be confused with John Davies of Hereford) was a man of the same pattern, though without lord Brooke’s memory of “the spacious days” and without his deep austerity. He, too, was a man of affairs, and rose to a high position in the state. His life, however, had not the same great beginning, and his was no smooth passage to fame. Born in 1569, at Tisbury in Wiltshire, he went to Winchester and Oxford (partly, it appears, resident at New college, partly at Queen’s college), and, like the majority of young men of the time, came, in 1587, to study law in London. But he quarrelled with the frend to whom he had dedicated his Orchestra, Richard Martin, and, entering the hall, armed with a dagger, he broke his cudgel over Martin’s head, who was eating dinner at the barristers’ table. In consequence of this outrage on the benchers, he was disbarred. For an orphan, with his way to make, the calamity was heavy. He returned to Oxford in 1598, three years after he had been called, and wrote his great poem Nosce Teipsum. Lord Mountjoy, afterwards earl of Devonshire, approved of it so highly that he advised Davies to publish it, with a dedicatory poem to the queen. This, Davies was not slow to do. The poem appeared the year after his expulsion from the bar, and added largely to his growing reputation as a poet. The Hymns to Astroea appeared in the same year, and Davies’s services were in request to write words for “entertainments” offered to her majesty. A Dialogue between a Gentleman Usher and a Poet, A contention betwixt a Wife, a Widdow and a Maide and A Lottery, are the names of those that are extant. A Lottery gained the queen’s acknowledgment, and, through the influence of lord Ellesmere, Davies, after a formal apology to the benchers and to Richard Martin, was reinstated at the bar in 1601. His career now began. He was among those who went with lord Hunsdon to escort king James to the English throne, and James was sufficiently impressed with him to appoint him solicitor-general for Ireland, under lord Mountjoy, then lord deputy. In December, 1603, on his arrival in Dublin, he was knighted, and, some years later, he married the daughter of lord Audley. One of his children was the famous countess of Huntingdon. His work in Ireland, where he remained until 1619, was distinguished, and how deeply he was interested in Irish affairs may be gathered from his Discourse of the true reasons why Ireland has never been intirely subdued till the beginning of His Majesty’s reign. In 1619, he resumed his seat in the House of Commons as member for Newcastle under Lyme, to which he had been elected in 1614, and, just before he could assume the office of chief justice, to which he had been appointed in 1626, he died suddenly of an apoplexy.
Orchestra or a Poeme on Dauncing was written before June, 1594, although it was not published until 1596. The poem is in the form of a dialogue between Penelope and one of her suitors, and consists of 131 stanzas of seven lines, each riming ababbcc. In the dedicatory sonnet to “his very friend M.A. Richard Martin,” which, in spite of the reconciliation, was omitted from the edition of 1622, Davies describes the poem as “this suddaine, rash half-capreol of my wit,” and reminds Martin how it was written in fifteen days. The fact is worthy of attention because it shows the writer’s ability and mastery over his material. The poem bears no sign of haste in the making. Gallant and gay, it flows with transparent clearness to its conclusion, and the verse has the happy ease which marks all the work of Davies, and makes it comparable with the music of Mozart.
His next work Nosce Teipsum possesses the same fluidity of thought and diction, which is the more remarkable as the poem is deeply philosophical. The sub-title explains the subject: “This oracle expounded in two elegies. 1. Of Human knowledge. 2. Of the Soule of Man and the immortalitie thereof.” The first edition was published in 1599, the second, “newly corrected and amended,” in 1602, the third in 1608, and, of course, the poem was included in the collected edition which Davies himself made of his poems in 1622.
“Wouldst thou be crowned the Monarch of a little world? command thyself,” wrote Francis Quarles, who was certainly well-acquainted with Nosce Teipsum, in the second century of his Enchiridion, and that sentence gives the gist of the first part of the poem on Humane Knowledge. Davies then passes on to examine the nature of the soul, its attributes and its connection with the body; and, having defined with exactness what he means by the soul, proceeds to prove its immortality by means of arguments for and against his proposition. Proof in such a matter is not possible; but a personal answer to the great question, so sincerely thought and so lucidly expressed as is this answer of Davies, will always have its value. Nor is Nosce Teipsum a treatise which ingenuity has fashioned into verse and which more properly would be expressed in plain prose. Davies does not, as it were, embroider his theme with verse, but uses verse, and its beauties of line and metaphor, to make his meaning more clear, and, thereby, gallantly justifies the employment of his medium. This mastery of his is enviously complete; but, perhaps, it is most conspicuous in the Hymns to Astroea which were first published in 1599. As the title-page announces, they are written “in Acrosticke verse.” They are twenty-six in number: each poem is of three stanzas (two of five lines, one of six lines), and each line begins with a different letter of the name Elizabetha Regina. Yet, in spite of this fantastic formality, not a line is forced, and one or two of the poems, notably hymn v, To the Lark,
Earley, cheerfule, mounting Larke,
Light’s gentle usher, Morning’s clark,
are exquisite songs.
Wing D-405 Langland to Wither #67
138F John Donne. 1571/2-1631
Poems, &c. By John Donne, late Dean of St. Pauls. With Elegies On The Author’s Death. To which is added Divers Copies under his own hand, Never before Printed.
London: In the Savoy, Printed by T.N. for Henry Herringman, at the sign of the Anchor, in the lower-walk of the New-Exchange, 1669
Octavo, 6 1⁄2 x 4 1⁄4.inches. Fifth edition. A4, B-Z8, Aa-Dd8. A1 and Dd8 are both blank and present in this copy. This copy is bound in contemporary full mottled calf. It has been sympathetically rebacked with raised bands and gilt title to spine. One text leaf was torn and repaired. The modern bookplate of noted Donne collector Mr. O. Damgaard-Nielsen is pasted inside the front board. The book is bound in a very humble full calf binding in the style of the period (a charming gentleman in a common coat).
This is the last and most complete edition of Donne’s poetry published in the seventeenth century, and the only Restoration printing. Many textual changes were made in this edition, and five new poems were added, including “To His Mistress Going to Bed,” and “O My America! My New-found-land.”
“The poetry of Donne represents a sharp break with that written by his predecessors and most of his contemporaries. Much Elizabethan verse is decorative and flowery in its quality. Its images adorn, its meter is mellifluous. Image harmonizes with image, and line swells almost predictably into line. Donne’s poetry, on the other hand, is written very largely in conceits— concentrated images which involve an element of dramatic contrast, of strain, or of intellectual difficulty. Most of the traditional ‘flowers of rhetoric’ disappear completely.
For instance, in his love poetry one never encounters bleeding hearts, cheeks like
roses, lips like cherries, teeth like pearls, or Cupid shooting arrows of love. The
tears which flow in A Valediction: of Weeping, are different from, and more
complex than, the ordinary saline fluid of unhappy lovers; they are ciphers,
naughts, symbols of the world’s emptiness without the beloved; or else, suddenly
reflecting her image, they are globes, worlds, they contain the sum of things.
The poet who plays with conceits not only displays his own ingenuity; he may see into
the nature of the world as deeply as the philosopher. Donne’s conceits in
particular leap continually in a restless orbit from the personal to the cosmic and back again.” (Norton Anthology)
Wing D-1871; Keynes 84; Wither to Prior 291.
420E Michael Drayton 1563-1631
The Battaile of Agincovrt. Fovght by Henry the Fift of that name, King of England, against the whole power of the French: vnder the raigne of their Charles the Sixt, Anno Dom. 1415. The miseries of Queene Margarite, the infortante vvife, of that most infortunate King Henry the Sixt. Nimphidia, the court of Fayrie. The quest of Cinthia. The shepheards sirena. The moone-calfe. Elegies vpon sundry occasions. By Michaell Drayton Esquire.
London: Printed by A.M. for William Lee, 1631 $3,000
Octavo 6.3 x 4.25 inches A-U8. The inner form of signature H was not re-inked before this impression was printed and therefore the inking is light, though the text is still legible. The lower margins are lightly wormed throughout, occasionally touching a letter in the last printed line. The contents are in good contemporary condition, having avoided the nineteenth century treatment of washing, pressing, and trimming the leaves. Second edition In contrast, this volume is in its original boards of seventeenth century speckled sheepskin that has been recently rebacked. “Born within a year before Shakespeare, and dying when Milton was already twenty-three, he worked hard at poetry during nearly sixty years of his long life, and was successful in keeping in touch with the poetical progress of a crowded and swiftly-moving period. His earliest published work tastes of Tottel’s Miscellany: before he dies, he suggests Carew and Suckling, and even anticipates Dryden. This quality of forming, as it were, a map or mirror of his age gives him a special interest to the student of poetry, which is quite distinct from his peculiar merits as a poet.
“The other of the two odes [most often] referred to is the most famous of Drayton’s poems, the swinging Ballad of Agincourt, dedicated ‘to the Cambro-Britans and their Harpe’. Here, more than anywhere, is heard the echo of Hewes and his like. Drayton worked upon the text of it to good purpose between 1606 and 1619, removing snags and obstructions in the course of its rhythm, and making clearer and clearer the ringing tramp of the marching army. With his stanzas of eight short, crisp lines, rhyming aaabcccb, it is the model for a war-poem; and the brave old song has as much power today to quicken the heartbeats as has the Henry V of Shakespeare, the success of which, doubtless, helped to inspire its composition.
“Drayton’s long and busy life closed at the end of 1631, and his body was buried in Westminster Abbey, under the north wall of the nave, and not in the Poet’s Corner where his bust may be seen. His right to the honour will possibly be more fully conceded by present and future ages than it has been at any other time since his own day. We see in him now, not, indeed, a poet of supreme imagination, nor one who worked a revolution or founded a school, but a poet with a remarkably varied claim on our attention and respect. Drayton was not a leader. For the most part he was a follower, quick to catch, and industrious to reproduce, the feeling and mode of the moment. So great, however, was his vitality and so fully was he a master of his craft that, living from the reign of Elizabeth into that of Charles I, he was able to keep abreast of his swiftly moving times, and, by reason of his very powers of labour, to bring something out of the themes and measures he employed which his predecessors and contemporaries failed to secure, but which after years owed to his efforts. This is especially the case, as we have seen, with his management of the rhymed couplet and the shortlined lyric. Sluggish, perhaps, of temper, and very variably sensitive to inspiration, he lacked the touchstone of perfect poetical taste, and, like Wordsworth, lacked also the finer virtues of omission. Yet everything that he wrote has its loftier moments; he is often ‘golden-mouthed’, indeed, in his felicity of diction, whether in the brave style of his youth or in the daintier manner of his age; and just as, in his attitude to life, ‘out of the strong came forth sweetness’, so, in his poetry, out of his dogged labour came forth sweetness of many kinds. In the long period which his work covered, the many subjects and styles it embraced, the beauty of its results and its value as a kind of epitome of an important era, there are few more interesting figures in English literature than Michael Drayton.” (Cambridge History of English and American Literature)
STC 7191.
770E Lord Brooke Fluke Greville 1554-1628
Certaine Learned And Elegant VVorkes Of The Right Honorable Fvlke Lord Brooke, Written in his Youth, and familiar Exercise with Sir Philip Sidney. The seuerall Names of which Workes the following page doth declare.
London: Printed by E.[lizabeth]P[urslowe]. for Henry Seyle, and are to be sold at his shop at the signe of the Tygers head in St. Paules Church-yard, 1633 5500 Small folio 8 1/4 X 5 1/2 inches π2; d-k4, L2, D-Z4, Aa-Qq4 Rr6, This copy is complete, lacking the first and last blank leaves.
In all the known copies of this work the pagination begins with p. 23, signature d. It is generally believed that the book originally began with “A treatise on religion” said to have been suppressed by order of Archbishop Laud. Grosart thinks the missing pages were prefatory matter containing a life of the author “with fuller details of his murder than his friends cared to let the world read” as stated in Biographia Britannica. cf. Memorial-introd. in Grosart’s edition of Brooke’s works, 1870, and Grolier Club, Catalogue of … works … from Wither to Prior, 1905. First edition. This copy is in good condition internally with only the usual minor dampstaining, and closely trimed . It is bound in full nineteenth century calfskin, ruled in gilt with edges stained safron. The binding has been skillfully rebacked . “Fulke Greville, afterwards lord Brooke, who wrote (but did not publish) at the end of the sixteenth century a miscellaneous collection of poems called Caelica. The collection consisted of one hundred and nine short poems, on each of which the author bestowed the title of sonnet. Only thirty-seven, however, are quatorzains. The remaining seventy-two so-called ‘sonnets’ are lyrics of all lengths and in all meters. There is little internal connection among Brooke’s poems, and they deserve to be treated as a series of independent lyrics. […] The series was published for the first time as late as 1633, in a collection of lord broke’s poetical writings. It may be reckoned the latest example of the Elizabethan sonnet-sequence.” (quoted from page 304, Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. III)
“If Fulke Greville, first Lord Brooke (1554-1628), had been born twenty years later, he might perhaps have stood —with Chapman rather than with Donne— in the forefront of the metaphysical movement. What Edward Phillips called his ‘close, mysterious and sentencious way of writing’ is nearer the metaphysical than the Spenserian manner, yet Greville shows, in Humane Learning, a Hobbesian distrust of metaphor, and his normal utterance is of a massive realistic plainness fitted for sober and penetrating thought. In parts of Caelica, which was begun under Sidney’s inspiration, he wreathed iron pokers into true-love knots, and although, according to Naunton, he ‘lived, dyed, a constant Courtier of the Ladies,’ no series of love poems was ever less amorous. For all the Petrarchan and Sidneian fancies, and the omnipresence of Cupid, Caelica, Myra, and Cynthia are something less than shadows, and towards the end they fade away altogether behind religious and philosophical reflection.” (quoted from page 94, Bush’s English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century) STC 12361,; Grolier’s Wither to Prior, # 406; Pforzheimer 437.;Hayward #68
689G George Herbert (1593-1633) and Christopher Harvey 1597-1663
The Temple. Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. By Mr. George Herbert, Late Oratour of the University of Cambridge. Together with his Life. with several Additions. Psal. 29. In his Temple doth every man speak of his honour. The Tenth Edition, with an Alphabetical Table for ready finding out the chief places.
[bound with]
The Synagogue: Or The Shadow Of The Temple. Sacred Poems, And Private Ejaculations. In Imitation of Mr. George Herbert. The Sixth Edition, Corrected and Enlarged.
London: Printed by W. Godbid, for R.S. and are to be Sold by John Williams Junior, in Cross-Key Court in Little-Britain, 1674
London: Printed for Robert Stephens, at the Kings-Arms in Chancery-Lane, 1673 $4,500
Duodecimo 5 ¾ x 3 ½ inches [π]6, [*]5, A-L12, K6; A-C12; A-B12, C6. The tenth edition. This copy is a very nice and tidy copy bound in 19th century vellum over boards. A very nice copy .
This work contains 140 stanzic patterns, including the most famous shaped poem in the English language. Herbert’s reputation rests on this remarkable collection of poems which mark perfectly the Metaphysical tone of his spiritual unrest which is resolved in final peace. “the Herbert we know through ‘Aaron,’ ‘Discipline,’ ‘The Collar,’ ‘The Pulley,’ and many other poems in which he strives to subdue the willful or kindle the apathetic self. His principal themes are those ‘two vast, spacious things, Sinne and Love.’ There is nothing soft in the poet who seeks to engrave divine love in steel; and a catalogue of gratuitous, untempered, and short-lived sweets leads up to the magnificent contrast of the disciplined soul that ‘never gives.’ (Bush)
Wing H-1521; Wing H-1049; Palmer IV, 12.
678F George Herbert 1593-1633
The Temple. Sacred Poems, And Private Ejaculations. By Mr. George Herbert, Late Orator of the University of Cambridge. Together with His Life. Psal. xxix. In his Temple doth every Man speak of his Honour. The Twelfth Edition Corrected, with the Addition of an Alphabetical Table.
The Synagogue: Or, The Shadow Of The Temple. Sacred Poems, And Private Ejaculations. In Imitation of Mr. George Herbert.
London: Printed by J. Barber, for Jeffery Wale, at the Angel in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1703 $3,100
Duodecimo 6 x 3 ¾ inches A-K12; A-E12, F6. The twelfth edition of the Herbert and the eighth edition of the Harvey. This is a very fresh copy in contemporary paneled calf, rebacked. “We may partly distinguish two poets in Herbert. There is, first, the parish priest of early seventeenth-century England who revered his Church as a chaste mother neither ‘painted’ nor ‘undrest;’ who deplored the worm of schism eating away the English rose and (to the disturbance of the Cambridge licenser in 1633) saw Religion standing “on tip-toe in our land, Readie to passe to the American strand;” who celebrated with loving particularity and complete security of belief the meaning of God’s temple and worship. It is this poet who can be fully appreciated, in Coleridge’s works, only by ‘an affectionate and dutiful child of the Church;’ and it is to Herbert’s writings and life that we owe much of our picture of the order, strength, and beauty of seventeenth-century Anglicanism at its best. But church-bells are heard beyond the stars, and the Anglican parish priest merges with the larger poet, with the very human saint who gives fresh and moving utterance to the aspirations and failures of the spiritual life. This is the Herbert we know through ‘Aaron,’ ‘Discipline,’ ‘The Collar,’ ‘The Pulley,’ and many other poems in which he strives to subdue the willful or kindle the apathetic self. His principal themes are those ‘two vast, spacious things … Sinne and Love.’ There is nothing soft in the poet who seeks to engrave divine love in steel; and a catalogue of gratuitous, untempered, and short-lived sweets leads up to the magnificent contrast of the disciplined soul that ‘never gives.’
“As the Anglican merges with the greater poet, so the ‘quaint’ writer merges with the metaphysical. Herbert had his share of the age’s passion for anagrams and the like, which Addison was to condemn as ‘false Wit.’ But the poet who could shape a poem in the physical likeness of ‘The Altar’ or ‘Easter Wings’ had, even more than most of his fellows, a functional sense of meter and rhythm. The technical experimentalist and master was, we remember, a skilled and devoted musician. The movement of his verse, taut or relaxed, can suggest all his fluctuating moods, from self-will or weakness to joyful surrender and assured strength. He moves from this world to the world of the spirit ‘As from one room t’another, or dwells simultaneously in both, and it is in keeping with that habit of mind, and with metaphysical origins in general, that many of his poems should be allegorical anecdotes, transfigured emblems. Apart from some of his fine dramatic openings, Herbert does not attempt the high pitch of Donne’s ‘Divine Poems.’ His great effects are all the greater for rising out of a homely, colloquial quietness of tone; and peace brings quiet endings— ‘So I did sit and eat;’ ‘And I reply’d, My Lord.’ Though the friend and admirer of Donne (and of Bacon), Herbert did not cultivate scholastic or scientific imagery; mature and everyday life, the Bible and the liturgy were his chief sources. The highest truth, as he said more than once, must be plainly dressed. In spite of his classical learning and his Latin and Greek verse, he avoided the common surface classicism of the time. Of the elements of a deeper classicism, if we care to use that name, he had muscular density, precision, deceptive simplicity, and a dynamic sense of form. At times his structure may be a winding stair, but it is all built of seasoned timber.” (Bush) Palmer IV, 15.
683G Benjamin Jonson ca. 1572-1637
The Works of Ben Jonson, which were formerly Printed in Two Volumes, are now Reprinted in One, to which is added a Comedy, called the New Inn, with Additions never before Published.
London: Printed by Thomas Hodgkin, for H. Herringman, E. Brewster, T. Bassett, R. Chiswell, M. Wotton, G. Conyers, 1692 $7,500
Folio 14 1/2 x 9 inches A6, B-Ll4, Oo-Bbb4, Ccc2, Eee-Zzz4, Aaaa-Zzzz4, Aaaaa4, Bbbbb6. “Dr. Greg called attention to the fact that sheet Ccc of this volume is invariably discolored. Besides that sheet, in all copies examined, sheet Zz2-3 is likewise foxed.” (Pforzheimer) Notably, these sheets are printed on paper which has a watermark not found elsewhere in the volume. The foxing is most likely due to the inferior quality of the paper, since all offending sheets share the same watermark.
First complete collected edition. This copy is bound in contemporary calf with a gilt stamp of initals under a correnet which has been rebacked. It is a very large and clean copy.
This edition, the last of the folio editions, of Ben Jonson’s works. It is truly complete, containing all the masques; epigrams; plays; verse letters and panegyrics; sonnets; the English Grammar; Timber, or Discoveries; and the translation of Horace’s de Arte Poetica. The New Inne is included in this collected edition for the first time.
“Jonson’s life was tough and turbulent. After his father’s early death, Ben was adopted in infancy by a bricklayer and educated by the great classical scholar and antiquarian William Camden, before necessity drove him to enter the army. In Flanders, where the Dutch with English help were warring against the Spaniards, he fought single-handed with one of the enemy before the massed armies, and killed his man. Returning to England about 1595, he began to work as an actor and playwright but was drawn from one storm center to another. He killed a fellow actor in a duel, and escaped the gallows only by pleading ‘benefit of the clergy’ (i.e., by proving he could read and write, which entitled him to plead before a more lenient court). He was jailed for insulting the Scottish nation at a time when King James was newly arrived from Scotland. He took furious part in an intricate set of literary wars with his fellow playwrights. Having converted to Catholicism, he was the object of deep suspicion after the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes (1605), when the phobia against his religion reached its height. Yet he rode out all these troubles, growing mellower as he grew older, and in his latter years became the unofficial literary dictator of London, the king’s pensioned poet, a favorite around the court, and the good friend of men like Shakespeare, Donne, Francis Beaumont, John Selden, Francis Bacon, dukes, diplomats, and distinguished folk generally. In addition, he engaged the affection of younger men (poets like Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, and Sir John Suckling, speculative thinkers like Lord Falkland and Sir Kenelm Digby), who delighted to christen themselves ‘sons of Ben.’ Sons of Ben provided the nucleus of the entire ‘Cavalier school’ of English poets.” (Norton Anthology of English Literature)
Wing J-1006; Pforzheimer 561.
779G Nicholas Ling, ed fl. ca. 1599
Politeuphuia, Wits Common-wealth. Newly corrected and amended.
London : E. Flesher, to be sold by Edward , 1647. $4,900
Duodecimo 5 3⁄4 x 3 1⁄4 inches. A-O12. 14th edition(?), first printed in 1597.(To the reader: “Courteous reader, encouraged by thy kind acceptance, of the first and second impression of Wits Common-wealth, I have once more adventured to present thee with the foureteenth edition.”) This copy is bound in ninteenth century full calf edges gilt a very lovely copy.
Usually ascribed to John Bodenham, who planned the collection, though the work appears to have been done by Nicholas Ling. Cf. Dedication; also DNB.p. Often cited as Wits’ commonwealth, and some editions appeared under that title. Published first in 1597, as the first in a series of which Mere’s “Palladis tamia”, 1598, was the second, “Wits theater of the little world,” by Robert Allott, 1598, the third, and “Palladis palatium, wisedoms’ pallace,” 1604, the fourth. Cf. DNB. “The popularity of this book, of which altogether some eighteen editions before the end of the seventeenth-century were issued, was due it would seem to the fact that it filled a peculiar need of the public of the day. It is difficult to imagine the style and tone of the conversation of the later years of Elizabeth’s court — the written word is the only clue. But it is certain that the more commonly endowed members of a society which included men of such wide reading and extensive knowledge as Bacon, Selden, Jonson and Raleigh must have frequently felt the need of some compendium of wise and sententious aphorisms by means of which they might ornament their discourse. It is just that function which this volume appears to be intended to fulfill for it is a compilation of precepts and maxims, frequently with their source noted, gathered under various heads such as ‘Of Courage’, ‘Of Nobilitie’, etc. Each division begins with a definition and ends with a Latin quotation, while the tables which are appended enable one to search not only the divisional topics, but also the individual aphorism much in the manner of a modern Bartlett.
“The popularity of this type of manual in the early years of the seventeenth century may be compared with the deluge of ‘outlines’ of this and that which the public of the present day is encouraged to imagine will provide a short and easy road to knowledge and culture. This appears to be substantiated by the fact that this book is but one, the first of a series, of four volumes which for the want of a better name is called the ‘Wits Series’. From the fact that there is no indication in this book that it was to be followed by others it may be assumed that the series, as a series at least, was not projected until after the demand for this first book indicated the public taste.
“In the address To the Reader, which otherwise appears to be a reprint of the text of the third edition, the present is numbered the ‘fifteenth edition’. It is quite possible that it is the fifteenth but we have only the publisher’s word as no copies of editions five to eight can be traced, and it is a well known ‘puffing’ device to misnumber editions.” (Pforzheimer)
Wing L- 2344; see Pforzheimer 802.;McKerrow 259 [triple star])
Copies – N.America: Harvard University , Lehigh University ,Library of Congress , William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of
551G Nicholas Ling , ed
fl. ca. 1599
London : printed for E. Flesher, in the year 1684. $2,900
Duodecimo 5 3⁄4 x 3 1⁄4 in A-O12 (lacking A1, blank). [8], 321, [7] p. ; 12 .
edition(?), first printed in 1597. Bound in full period style calf, a very nice copy.
Copies – N.America: Folger Shakespeare, Harvard University, Huntington , Indiana University, San Francisco, University of Cincinnati, University of Illinois
Wing L-2337; Pforzheimer 803.
644F Titus Carus Lucretius 95-52 B.C.
Titus Lucretius Carus His Six Books Of Epicurean Philosophy, Done into English Verse, with Notes. The Third Edition. Demetri, Teq; Tigelli Discipulorum inter jubeo plorare Cathedras; i, Puer, atque meo citus hœc subscribe libello.
London: Printed for Thomas Sawbridge at the Three Flewer-de-luces in little Britain, and Anthony Stephens Bookseller near the Theatre in Oxford, 1683 $2, 100
Octavo 7 ½ x 4 ½ inches (a*)4, ¶2, (A)-(D)4, A-Z4, Aa-Ee4, (a)-(h)4, I2.(This copy has an extra blank bound after the title page.) Third edition. The engraved frontispiece is bound opposite the title. This copy is bound in contemporary calfskin, and has been rebacked. This translation was prepared by Thomas Creech (1659-1700). The prefatory material contains commendatory poems by John Evelyn, Nathaniel Tate, Thomas Otway, and Aphra Behn among others, many of which were added after the first and second editions and this, the third edition contains the first appearance of several poems. The influence of Lucretius can be seen in Pope’s ‘Essay on Man.’ Lucretius was also favorite reading of Shelley, Wordsworth, and Tennyson.
“Creech’s translation of Lucretius vied in popularity with Dryden’s Virgil and Pope’s Homer. The son of one of his friends is reported to have said that the translation was made in Creech’s daily walk round the parks in Oxford in sets of fifty lines, which he would afterwards write down in his chamber and correct at leisure. […] When Dryden published his translations from Theocritus, Lucretius, and Horace, he disclaimed in the preface any intention of robbing Creech ‘of any part of that commendation which he has so justly acquired,’ and referred to his predecessor’s ‘excellent annotations, which I have often reprinted in the last century, and was included in the edition of the British poets which was issued by Anderson.” (DNB)
Wing L-3449; Gordon Lucretius 311c; O’Donnell (Behn) # BB11; Keynes (Evelyn) P-258; T.C. II: 6; see Grolier W-P #237 for the first edition.
893F Sir John Suckling 1609-1642 Fragmenta Aurea. A Collection of all The Incomparable Peeces, Written By Sir John Svckling. And published by a Friend to perpetuate his memory. Printed by his owne Copies. London: Printed for Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at his shop, at the Signe of the Princes Armes in St Pauls Churchyard, 1646 5,500 Octavo 7 x 4.75 inches A4, A6, B-G8, H4. First edition. This is a very large copy, with many deckle edges throughout. The leaves are large and clean, with a crisp type impression. They have not been washed or pressed. It is bound in comenmporary full calf, housed ia a custom made solander case. This copy has the words ‘Fragmenta Aurea’ with the ‘F’ and ‘A’ capitalized, the rest in small letters. Some copies of the first edition have ‘Fragmenta Aurea’ in all caps.This volume is divided into four parts, each with a separate title-page and pagination. The first contains a medley of poems and songs, a number of letters, and an essay on religion; the other three are plays, “Aglaura,” “The Goblins,” and “The Tragedy of Brennoralt.” At his best, Suckling writes with considerable charm; the song which begins, “Why so pale and wan fond lover” has a permanent place in the language of courtship. There is also a short “supplement” to Shakespeare”s Lucrece.
“Sir John Suckling, a Cavalier poet, Suckling’s short life was so crowded with activity that the amount of his literary output is remarkable. The son of an old Norfolk family, he seems to have taken his education none too seriously: he left Cambridge without graduating and spent a year at Gray’s Inn. His father died when Suckling was 18, and this gave him freedom to seek what adventures he pleased. He was a member of the expedition to the Ile de Re (1627), was in the Netherlands (1629-30), and served under Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (1631-32). He was knighted in 1630. “A staunch Royalist, Suckling took up arms on the king’s behalf in 1639 and 1640 and is believed to have been active in a plot to free the Earl of Strafford from the Tower. It was to the Parliamentary party’s advantage to make a ‘plot’ of the affair and Suckling fled to Paris, where he died in the following year—by his own hand according to John Aubrey. “Suckling was the author of three plays—Aglaura, The Goblins, and Brennoralt—which have never been revived but which contain some good lyrics, notably ‘Why so pale and wan, fond lover?’ His best work, indeed, is in the form of short pieces, occasional verses and songs, and in the delightful ‘A Ballad upon a Wedding.’ His expression is direct and robust, reflecting to some degree his lively, pleasure-loving, and tragically short life. His first published collection was A session of the Poets (1637). Fragmenta Aurea. A Collection of all the Incomparable Pieces, written by Sir John Suckling. And published by a Friend to perpetuate his memory appeared posthumously (1646).” (quoted from Stapleton’s Cambridge Guide to English Literature) Wing S-6126; Pforzheimer 996; Hayward 84; Greg, III, 1130- 1; Studies in Bibliography, L. A. Beaurline and T. Clayton, “Notes on Early Editions of Fragmenta Aurea,” Studies in Bibliography 23 (1970), pp. 165-170; Wither to Prior 827; CBEL I, 1213; Folger, Printed Books 25:575.
807E Robert Wild 1609-1679
Iter Boreale, with large additions of several other poems, begin an exact colection of all hitherto extant. Never before published together.
London: printed for the booksellers, 1668. $4,800
Octavo 6 x 3 ½ inches “The recantation of a penitent Proteus” and “The fair quarrel” with separate title-pages./ There are at least two editions of 1668. The present is misgauged and the first line of the imprint ends: Lon” Signatures: A-H8. Title within single rule border; head-pieces./ Leaves A1 and H8 are blank.
First Complete edition, Fourth edition overall . This is the ‘Huth copy’ , It is bound in full modern morocco. a very tidy copy. The title-poem first appeared separately in 1660; a smaller collection that this one (1668)appeared in 1661, and was reprinted in 1665. Wild, a Puritan divine, met with popularity of his poetry rather disturbed such non-literary friends as Richard Baxter. Included here are “The Norfolk and Wisbech Cock-Fight,” “Upon Some Bottles of Sack and Claret,” a satire on the political contortions of Nathaniel Lee, and a number of ballads and elegies. Not a particularly common book; the new edition of Wing does not locate copies in the British Library, Harvard, or Yale (though these have a variant, status undetermined, with 120 pp. of text, as opposed to 122 pp. here)
Wing W2136; Grolier 976; Hayward 121 ; CBEL II, 488.
Charles Cotton 1630-1687 William Davenant, 1606-1668 Sir John Davies 1569-1626 John Donne. 1571/2-1631 Michael Drayton 1563-1631 Lord Brooke Fluke Greville 1554-1628 George Herbert (1593-1633) George , Sir John Davies, William Davenant,
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Home to famous Kenroku-en Garden regareded as Japan's three most beautiful gardens
Open-Air Museum
First Open-Air Museum in Japan, Picasso Pavilion and Foot-Bath Hot-Spring
Contemporary Art Museum in Roppongi Hills of Tokyo
Kirishima Open-Air Museum
Open air museum with art hall by works of international artists
Ishikawa Kutaniyaki Art Museum
Exhibition of Japanese traditional art crafts, Kutaniyaki
UKAI Venetian Glass Museum
Antique and Modern Venetian Glass Museum
Karuizawa Picturebook Forest Museum
Museum displaying 6,000 picture books and original sketches
Beautiful museum designed by I. M. Pei & known for its seamless integration with nature
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Brad Snyder, author of A Well Paid Slave: Curt Flood’s Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports
Upon being traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1969, Curt Flood, an All-Star center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, wanted nothing more than to stay with St. Louis. But his only options were to report to Philadelphia or retire. Instead, Flood sued Major League Baseball for his freedom, hoping to invalidate the reserve clause in his contract, which bound a player to his team for life.
Author Joe MaitaPosted on February 25, 2008 May 28, 2019 Categories Biographers, InterviewsTags african american history, baseball history, civil rights history, interviews, sports historyLeave a comment on Brad Snyder, author of A Well Paid Slave: Curt Flood’s Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports
Joshua Prager, author of The Echoing Green:The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World
The 1951 regular season was as good as over. The Brooklyn Dodgers led the New York Giants by three runs with just three outs to go in their third and final playoff game. And not once in major league baseballs 278 preceding playoff and World Series games had a team overcome a three-run deficit in the ninth inning. But New York rallied, and at 3:58 p.m. on October 3, 1951, Bobby Thomson hit a home run off Ralph Branca. The Giants won the pennant.
Author Joe MaitaPosted on November 29, 2006 May 27, 2019 Categories InterviewsTags baseball history, bobby thomson, interviews, joshua prager, ralph brancaLeave a comment on Joshua Prager, author of The Echoing Green:The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World
Larry Jansen interview
“I just wish I could pitch for one year!”, former Major League pitcher Larry Jansen says when asked about today’s salaries. But you get the sense he wouldn’t trade today’s money for a single memory of his life long career in baseball. Jansen was a 1950 All-Star pitcher (he induced Joe Dimaggio to hit a fly ball), a two time 20 game winner, and the winning pitcher in perhaps the greatest baseball game ever played, Game 3 of the 1951 playoff between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers.
Author Joe MaitaPosted on April 9, 1999 Categories InterviewsTags baseball history, sports historyLeave a comment on Larry Jansen interview
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Robotics Competition Kicks Student’s Creativity Into Gear
BY Oren Peleg | Dec 13, 2017 | Education
Participants from 88 countries take part in FIRST Lego League (FLL) regional tournaments around the globe — presenting functional robots and comprehensive research on real-world issues such as food safety, recycling and renewable energy.
And thousands of those competitors and their mentors — from at least 52 of those countries — rely on the online resources created by Jared Hasen-Klein, an 18-year-old senior at Milken Community Schools, to prepare.
“I just created stuff that didn’t exist for me,” said Hasen-Klein, who began competing in FLL as a 9-year-old. “It’s really cool to see all of the countries on a map when I look at my analytics.”
Hasen-Klein said he created his website, hub.jaredhk.com, in 2015 to serve an important need for competitors in the distinguished science and robotics program dreamed up by the toymaker Lego and the nonprofit For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST). Together, they’ve held more than 1,400 competitions since 1998 for kids ages 9 to 14.
The problem: a lack of resources made available online for competitors to help with understanding the rules and improving performance. Hasen-Klein’s site not only features the rules — which often take too long to be updated on the competition’s website, he said — but offers games to test knowledge of the rules, printable resources like scoring sheets that teams can use during practice sessions, and scoring calculators.
There’s even an online form that competition referees started using on their phones to transfer scores electronically rather than using pen and paper and running notes over to scoring panels.
On a recent weekend, Hasen-Klein even hosted an all-day workshop at Milken for 65 visiting students and teachers taking part in local FLL regional tournaments to provide an overview of the judging process and answer questions.
“What really sets Jared apart is his initiative to go a step further and offer help wherever it’s needed,” said Stephen Shapiro, Hasen-Klein’s robotics manager at Milken.
Wendy Ordower, Milken’s director of service learning, said Hasen-Klein is prone to this type of selfless donation of his time. He volunteered as a digital expert giving whatever spare time he had to Milken’s school paper, The Roar, for two years before eventually writing for them.
“He does all of this because he just says it’s fun,” she said.
No one pays Hasen-Klein to provide these FLL resources, including the constant updates he makes to his website in advance of regional tournaments that take place each November. Still, he shrugged off the notion that he goes above and beyond.
“I’ve made it a priority to do this stuff. It’s rewarding knowing that people are using my resources. If I’m able to do it, why shouldn’t I do it?” he said.
As a fifth-grader at Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School in Northridge, Hasen-Klein stumbled upon his school’s robotics team when he realized sports and after-school acting programs weren’t for him.
“One of FIRST’s slogans is that robotics is the varsity sport where anyone can go pro. It’s so fun and it shows kids that maybe don’t necessarily fit in somewhere that there’s something for them,” he said. “You don’t have to come in with natural talent. You can learn it. It’s fair to say that was me.”
Now, besides competing in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), also operated by FIRST, for high school students with his Milken team, he co-coaches the Heschel team he first captained seven years ago. He also volunteers as a judge at competitions on many fall and winter weekends, including the FLL world championships, where he meets kids who use his site.
“When I attend the world championship, I walk around to the pit areas and do ‘market research,’ and it is always fun to hear from the teams that found my website,” he said.
Hasen-Klein’s expansive involvement with robotics has earned him several awards, including the Los Angeles Area Volunteer of the Year Award given to him by FIRST at last year’s FRC world championship in Houston.
Kathy Reynolds, who was Hasen-Klein’s first robotics coach at Heschel and now coaches with him there, gushed over her former pupil-turned-colleague.
“We are very proud of Jared for the gifts he brings to these organizations in the enormity of invested time, his generosity in sharing his expertise, and mostly his humble dedication as a role model,” she said.
One of the things Hasen-Klein finds most rewarding about helping kids prepare for FLL competitions is the potential impact he is having on kids passionate about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). FLL boasts on its website that its worldwide competitions essentially are producing “tomorrow’s innovators.” Hasen-Klein sees something similar at competitions he attends where youngsters tackle real-world issues.
“Being a judge at these competitions has been so cool. When you see the global innovations they are coming up with, it’s amazing and you wonder when they will be adopted by professionals. One that stuck out was do-it-yourself water filters for people in Third World countries or those affected by natural disasters,” he said. “These kids are getting real skills to go get STEM jobs in the future. It’s such a great starting point.”
As for his potential future in the STEM world, Hasen-Klein was mum.
“I still have no idea what I want to do,” he said. “I guess I’ll figure it out eventually.”
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December 16, 2012 by orchidus
Córdoba, Andalucía: The Jewel of the Guadalquivir Valley
Córdoba, Andalucía
Visited on June 24, 2011. Located in Andalucía.
Mihrab in the Mezquita (mosque) portion of La Catedral de Córdoba, Spain
Attraction Checklist:
Roman bridge across the Guadalquivir River
La Catedral (Mezquita) de Córdoba
Calleja de Las Flores
Jewish Quarter
La Sinagoga (Synagogue)
A few hours after midday we arrived in Córdoba—a city that was founded by the Romans in 169 B.C. and became the capital of Baetica or Lower Hispania in 152 B.C. Later, it would fall under the hands of the Visigoths in the 5th century A.D. and then the Moors in 711. Under Abd ar-Rahman I of the Umayyad dynasty, Córdoba was the capital during 756-1031—its most prosperous and rich period rivaling the wealth and power of Constantinople and Baghdad. Today, the old city retains many architectural wonders from the Romans, Moors, Jews, and Christians.
Roman bridge entering Córdoba, Spain
We crossed a Roman bridge from Emperor Augustus’ era across the Guadalquivir River to enter the old city. At the end of the bridge, there is the Bridge’s Gate (also known as the Arch of Triumph) built by King Philip II 1572.
Bridge’s Gate (also known as the Arch of Triumph) at the entrance of Córdoba
Within the old city, there are winding, narrow streets filled with shops and restaurants. We had lunch in one of the restaurants before we went to the grandest sight of all—La Catedral de Córdoba.
Mezquita (mosque) portion of La Catedral de Córdoba, Córdoba, Spain
La Catedral de Córdoba dates from the 10th centuryand has been modified and extended over a period of more than two hundred years. The structure was initially built as a mosque (Mezquita); we can still see 856 of the 1,013 red and white arched pillars, which create an illusion of space in the horizontal structure.
Floral arches of La Catedral de Córdoba, Córdoba, Spain
Other floral arches and ornate naves are seen deeper in the mosque. To note, there is evidence of Byzantine and Roman styles of the star-like shapes of the naves and Corinthian columns.
Path to the Altar in La Catedral de Córdoba, Córdoba, Spain
The pillars were destroyed during the Christian Reconquest in 1236 and led to the expansion to a Catedral in 1523 under orders of Bishop Alonso Manrique. The late Renaissance-style arches and Spanish Baroque ornamentation bring in more light to the place in contrast to the cool, meditative atmosphere of the mosque.
Calleja de las Flores, Córdoba, Spain
While I cannot describe everything that was seen in this magnificent work of art, I highly suggest reading In Focus: Córdoba guide to the city published by Edilux. It contains detailed explanations and photographs of details of the building and can be found in many tourist shops.
After the breathtaking tour of the Catedral, we went through the narrow streets to the Calleja de Las Flores (Street of Flowers), admiring the Moorish-style residences. Then, we headed towards the Jewish Quarter via a courtyard and to the Sinagoga (Synagogue) located on the Calle Judios.
Jewish Quarter, Córdoba, Spain
The Sinagoga was built in 1315 by Alfonso XI in the Mudéjar style filled with detailed patterns.
La Sinagoga, Córdoba, Spain
Afterwards, we returned to the hotel to rest and had dinner.
It would be nice to spend more time in the La Catedral de Córdoba because there are plenty of details to see.
Part of Trafalgar’s Best of Spain 2011 tour.
Andalucia Com S.L. (2012). Córdoba Mezquita. Retrieved from http://www.andalucia.com/cities/cordoba/mosque.htm
Núñez, J. Agustín. (Unknown). In Focus: Córdoba. (J. Trout, trans.) Granada, Spain: Ediciones Edilux S.L.
Witcombe, Christopher L.C.E. (1998). Sacred Places: Mosque of Córdoba. Retrieved from http://witcombe.sbc.edu/sacredplaces/cordoba.html
This entry was posted in Europe, report, Spain, Travel and tagged Andalucía Spain, Córdoba Spain, La Catedral de Córdoba, Mosque of Córdoba. Bookmark the permalink.
← Carmona, Andalucía: Of Olives and A Roman Fortress
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« Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Promotions – History and Musings
Judo Footsweeps for BJJ, MMA, and Grappling »
Exploring the Concept of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Vortex
February 27, 2012 by Jeff Chan
Beware the jiu-jitsu vortex. Photo couresy of ahisgett.
The name of The Jiu-Jitsu Vortex was originally inspired by the tendency for BJJ to swallow the practitioner’s life, but further investigation has unearthed deeper meanings. As it turns out, the phrase “jiu-jitsu vortex” can be used to describe the sparring style of almost any Brazilian jiu-jitsu addict.
The Jiu-Jitsu Vortex in a Social Sense
Definition 1. The phenomenon by which a BJJ practitioner’s life is overtaken by the drive to train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu day and night.
Sample sentence: “I blew off another dinner last night because I was at the gym. This jiu-jitsu vortex is going to cost me all of my friends.”
I first used the phrase “jiu-jitsu vortex” a couple of years ago when – after realizing that BJJ was taking over my life – I referred to myself being “slowly but surely sucked into the Brazilian jiu-jitsu vortex.” This definition is explored in some detail on “What is The Jiu-Jitsu Vortex?”, one of the first pages added to this site.
The Jiu-Jitsu Vortex in a Meteorological Sense
Definition 2. A fast-moving, attacking style of jiu-jitsu reminiscent of a tornado; often highly technical. Fighters using this kind of BJJ typically use continual position changes to confuse and/or disorient their opponent to the point that they become exhausted and leave themselves open to a submission.
Sample sentence: “That guy scrambles like a ferret. Sparring with him is like getting caught in a jiu-jitsu vortex.”
Meterological vortexes (tornadoes) cause ridiculous amounts of destruction in a couple of minutes. Likewise, facing off against some BJJ fighters will make you feel like you’ve been thrown into a blender. Genki Sudo unleashed a jiu-jitsu vortex on his fellow competitors when he showed up at the Westside Submission Grappling Tournament in 2001. Check the whirlwind sequence that starts at 2:18 – what an awesome way to get to mount.
Guilherme and Rafael Mendes are fast-moving technical wizards and are continually pushing the evolution of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Here’s a highlight reel that includes footage from from 2009 ADCC, 2010 Pan Jiu Jitsu Championship, and the 2008-2011 Mundials.
The Jiu-Jitsu Vortex in a Cosmological Sense
Definition 3. A steady, unrelenting Brazilian jiu-jitsu style typically characterized by an emphasis on control and strong, basic techniques. The strategy employed by these fighters involves slowing the action down and applying constant pressure in an attempt to frustrate, annoy, and crush the life out of their opponent until a submission opportunity shows itself.
Sample sentence: “He’s like a jiu-jitsu vortex, once he gets a hold of you it’s just a matter of time before you’ll be tapping out.”
Astronomic forces are as powerful as you’re going to get, but they do not work quickly. Astronomy / cosmology nerds such as myself will enjoy this animation – courtesy of NASA and the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center (ARSC) – that depicts an astronomic vortex in action during the formation of a spiral galaxy. Note in the bottom right corner that the process takes place over a period of 14.6 Gigayears (14,600,000,000 years). That’s a long-ass time.
Watching Roger Gracie’s matches always reminds me of a related passage from A Brief History of Time in which Stephen Hawking describes the experience of an astronaut being sucked into the ultimate vortex – a black hole: “[the astronaut] would not, in fact, feel anything special as he reached the critical radius, and could pass the point of no return without noticing it. However, within just a few hours, as the region continued to collapse, the difference in the gravitational forces on his head and his feet would become so strong that it would tear him apart.”
I’d pass this point of no return simply by walking onto the mat opposite Roger. For someone like Braulio Estima, Andre Galvao, or Jacare, the point of no return might be the moment that their arm crosses Roger’s centreline and he hits an armdrag, or when he sweeps and ends up in the mount.
This highlight reel shows Roger Gracie in action vs. Ricardo Franco, Marcelo Garcia, Terere, Roberto Tozl, Roberto Agnese, Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza.
So whether it moves at a deadly, frenetic, and exhausting pace or plods forwards excruciatingly slowly, the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Vortex not only describes you, but it will swallow you alive. What kind of jiu-jitsu vortex are you?
Posted in Martial Arts / Jiu-Jitsu Philosophy, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
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Grand Valley State (Mich.) (4-3) 6 13 14 28 61
Lake Erie (1-6) 10 7 14 0 31
Photo by Ryan Baker/Baker Media Productions
Pa: Sean Bedevelsky - 280
Ru: David Romeo - 79
Rec: Brandon James - 82
Pa: Heath Parling - 207
Ru: Norman Shuford - 167
Rec: Norman Shuford - 118
Time of Poss.
PAINESVILLE, OHIO – The Lake Erie College football team went toe-to-toe for 45 minutes with perennial national power Grand Valley State University Saturday night (Oct. 15) but the visiting Lakers exploded for 28 points in the first eight minutes of the fourth quarter to turn a tight two-point game into a 61-31 win at Jack Britt Memorial Stadium.
The two teams went back and forth through the first three quarters, which each squad seemingly making big play after big play. The Storm (1-6, 0-6 GLIAC) made it a 33-31 game with 6:51 to go in the third on a 72-yard run by fifth-year senior wing back David Romeo (Eastlake, Ohio/Eastlake North). But that was the last big play for Lake Erie.
Grand Valley (4-3, 3-3 GLIAC) meanwhile came up with a few more in the fourth to distance themselves from the Storm and win their third straight game. The Lakers got a 49-yard touchdown run from Norman Shuford, a 41-yard pass from Heath Parling to Charles Johnson and a 49-yard interception return for six points by Erik Thompson in the first half of the fourth quarter to stun the home team.
Shuford's 49-yard romp capped a huge night for him. He led all players with 167 yards rushing on 14 carries, with two touchdowns, and caught three passes for 118 yards including a 58-yard touchdown catch. Hersey Jackson added 112 yards on 14 carries on the ground as part of the Lakers' 340-yard rushing attack.
After each team stalled on their first drive of the game, Lake Erie was able to moved out of the shadow of its own goal line with a nine-play, 75-yard drive which culminated in a 44-yard field goal by Sam Marcotte (Chardon, Ohio/Chardon), his second longest boot of the season.
Grand Valley responded immediately as Erik Thompson returned the ensuing kickoff 100-yards for a touchdown and 6-3 lead after the extra point was missed. Lake Erie quickly responded will a big play of its own as freshman wingback Aaron Lindgren (Willoughby, Ohio/Willoughby South) scored his second career touchdown on a 54-yard pitch and catch from senior quarterback Sean Bedevelsky (Brunswick, Ohio/Brunswick).
The Lakers regained the advantage on the first play of the second quarter as Jackson went 35-yard untouched into the end zone and extended that lead to 16-10 midway through the period on a 24-yard field goal. Lake Erie retook the lead after a 40-yard pitch to freshman Rodney Smith (Bartwo, Fla./Bartow) set up his own one-yard run.
Grand Valley came right back with a 23-yard field goal and the Storm tried to do the same just before the half but Marcotte's 25-yard attempt was blocked with the Lakers taking a 19-17 lead to halftime.
After Lake Erie went three-and-out to open the second half, the teams traded a pair of touchdowns each on the next four possessions. GVSU got two scores from Norman Shuford, via a nine-yard run and 58-yard pass. Romeo matched him stride-for-stride with a five-yard TD catch and then his 72-yard scoring scamper.
Lake Erie kept the momentum as senior safety Steve Bensinger (Poland, Ohio/South Range) picked off his third pass of the season. The Storm picked up two first downs to move into Laker territory but was forced to punt.
Shuford's 49-yard run put the Lakers up 40-3, but for the first time all night, Lake Erie's offense was unable to keep pace with a three-and-out and interception on its next two possessions. The Lakers capitalized both times with a four-yard TD run by Michael Ratay and the TD from Parling to Johnson.
The Storm's last offensive threat was thwarted when Thompson corralled a tip pass and weaved through traffic down the near sideline for the final score.
Despite a blustery night that saw a steady 20-plus mile-per-hour wind with gusts over 35 mph, Bedevelsky completed 22-of-38 passes for 280 yards and two touchdowns but had his consecutive streak of passes without an interception ended at 151. He also rushed for 66 yards as the Storm totaled a season-high 482 yards on offense.
Romeo led the ground game for Lake Erie with 79 yards on four carries and Smith chipped in with 74 yards on 15 attempts. Senior Brandon James (Mentor, Ohio/Mentor) caught six passes for 82 yards and Lindgren had four grabs for 81.
The Lakers rolled up 547 yards on offense overall. Parling was just nine-of-20 passing, but totaled 207 yards and two touchdowns against one interception. Johnson caught three passes for 74 yards. Shuford totaled 285 all-purpose yards for Grand Valley.
Tonight's game was part of Lake Erie's "Taking Breast Cancer by Storm" awareness initiative. Lake Erie players wore a pink ribbon decal on their helmets along with pink themed accessories.
The Storm returns to action next Saturday with a 1 p.m. start against the University of Findlay at home. The game is the annual Youth Day and NCAA Take a Kid to the Game Day for the Storm.
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Friends' Vaping Could Pose Danger to Kids With Asthma
Flu Shot Crucial for Those With COPD
Sleep Patterns May Offer Clues to Alzheimer's
Cancer Information/electronic cigarettes
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 9, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Add another danger that e-cigarettes pose to teenagers: A new study finds secondhand exposure to vaping may raise the chances of asthma attacks in adolescents with the respiratory condition.
Middle school and high school students with asthma were 27 percent more likely to have suffered an asthma attack if they’d been exposed to vapor from someone else’s e-cigarette use, the researchers found.
“While we cannot definitively say these products worsen asthma, I think if I was a parent, I wouldn’t want to risk my kids being around people using these products,” said lead researcher Jennifer Bayly. She is a student at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J.
These findings and others belie the general perception that e-cigarette emissions carry no risk, said Dr. Karen Wilson, chief of general pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
“Contrary to the idea that it’s a harmless water vapor, it actually contains some of the same chemicals that we find in tobacco smoke, along with particulate matter that can be very irritating to people with asthma,” Wilson said.
There is moderate scientific evidence that e-cigarette use causes increased cough and wheeze in teenagers, and an increase in asthma symptoms, according to a recent National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report cited by the study authors.
For their research, Bayly and her colleagues gathered data from the 2016 Florida Youth Tobacco Survey. It included about 33,500 high school students and just over 36,000 middle school students, aged 11 to 17. The study focused on 11,830 students who reported having asthma.
Overall, 21 percent of kids with asthma said they’d had an asthma attack during the previous year, and 33 percent said they’d been exposed to secondhand vapor from an e-cigarette.
This exposure to secondhand vapor was tied to a significantly increased risk of an asthma attack, even after researchers accounted for other factors, such as whether the teens used an e-cigarette themselves or had been exposed to tobacco smoke.
The report was published Jan. 4 in the journal Chest.
“The authors did a nice job of controlling for other sources” of exposure to lung-irritating substances, said Dr. Christy Sadreameli, a pediatric pulmonologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and a spokeswoman for the American Lung Association.
If anything, the new study probably understated the effect secondhand e-cigarette vapor has on kids, Wilson and Sadreameli said.
That’s partly because the study focused on adolescents, Wilson said. “I’d be very worried to think about the impact on small children who can’t escape these secondhand aerosols,” she explained.
It’s also because the survey data is now years old, Sadreameli added, and e-cigarette use has surged even more since the advent of Juul, a leading e-cig brand that is popular with young people.
“We know that uptake of electronic cigarettes is happening at a pretty rapid rate,” Sadreameli said. “If anything, there may be even more students, if they did the study today, who are being exposed to [electronic nicotine delivery systems] or possibly using them.”
E-cigarette vapor contains propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, nicotine and many different flavoring agents, the researchers noted. Each have been linked to inflammation and irritation in the lungs that could impact asthma sufferers.
Parents should limit kids’ exposure to secondhand vapor, particularly if they have asthma, Wilson and Sadreameli said.
But Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, a nonprofit that advocates for sensible regulation of vaping products, took issue with the findings.
“Unfortunately, the authors of this study failed to disclose what percentage of vapor-exposed youth were also exposed to cigarette smoke — despite having that data available to them — therefore making it impossible for a reader to determine whether any effect remains if cigarette smoke exposure is eliminated,” Conley said.
The University of California, Davis has more about e-cigarettes.
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Baucus Setting Aside Talks on Public Plan To Focus on Other Aspects of Health Overhaul Legislation
At a meeting with reporters on Friday, Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said he will temporarily set aside talks on a new public insurance option to focus on maintaining employer self-insurance plans, CQ Today reports. Self-insured companies qualify for tax exemptions through the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. The federal law allows firms to create their own tax-exempt insurance plan -- a means of cutting costs by taking on the risks themselves -- as long as the plans meet federal standards laid out by ERISA. Firms contract with private insurers to administer the plans. Baucus said he would aim to preserve this self-insurance system while expanding private coverage and public programs such as Medicaid. He said, "We'll end up with more private insurance and more public insurance" (Armstrong, CQ Today , 4/24).
As for the creation of a new public insurance option, Baucus said that it is "on the table," adding that it "might be to the side a little bit, ... but it's still on the table." He added, "We're trying to get momentum going. We'll get to the public option a little later. Let's not forget: There's an awful lot more here than the public option" (Young, The Hill , 4/24).
Baucus said he would support a "system similar to Massachusetts," which allows residents to buy coverage through a "connector" offering plans that meet government-established benefit minimums. He also said, "I think the whole system should be more national, and the benefits have to be more national. You can't have benefits be one level in one state, and another level in other states." However, he said his goal is not to disrupt employer-sponsored plans. According to Baucus, "The system I envision is where self-insured companies, ERISA companies, can keep their own plans and manage health insurance in the way that they have. We're not going to change the ways self-insured companies handle health care for employees." As for workers at smaller firms that do not offer insurance and other people buying insurance on their own, Baucus said they could purchase insurance through the exchange that would be similar to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. He also said, "We have to reform the health insurance market" by guaranteeing that people are able to purchase insurance ( CQ Today , 4/24).
Costs, Reconciliation
Baucus said one of the problems facing progress on health reform legislation is that it is "hard to get numbers" from the Congressional Budget Office on costs and savings related to potential changes in health care delivery, because "this is fairly new." He noted that such proposals include bundling hospital payments, rather than paying for individual services, and using medical homes to coordinate care. In addition, he said, "We're going to probably have to breathe new life into CMS," noting that he supports expanding the agency's ability to develop creative ways to oversee federal coverage that could be a model for private insurers (Edney, CongressDaily , 4/24). Experts have said hundreds of billions of dollars could be saved by reducing the cost of care in certain geographic areas and bringing those costs in line with the costs of more efficient areas. Baucus added, "Our job is to transfer that more broadly to the rest of the country, mostly through Medicare," adding, "We're really trying to get internal savings in the system" ( CQ Today , 4/24).
Discussing the possibility of using the budget reconciliation process in the Senate, which would require 51 votes rather than 60 votes to pass overhaul legislation, Baucus said, "If we jam something down somebody's throat, it's not sustainable. I want something sustainable that's going to last." He added that even if instructions to use the process end up in the final budget, "We don't have to use it if we work together." He also predicted that the budget would be designed so that Congress can put off reconciliation until "very late in the year."
On Wednesday Finance Committee members will meet to discuss Baucus' proposals for reforming the health care delivery system. Two more "walk-throughs" in May will focus on extending insurance to more U.S. residents and how to pay for an overhaul. The committee hopes to have a bill marked-up by June and a final version passed by August ( The Hill , 4/24).
For those advocating making health care available to all U.S. residents, "the fixation on a public plan is bizarre and counterproductive," because that "position elevates the public plan way out of proportion to its importance in fixing health care," a Washington Post editorial states. According to the Washington Post , "It is difficult to imagine a truly level playing field that would simultaneously produce benefits from a government-run system." The editorial adds that Medicare is able to keep drug prices under control essentially by forcing private insurers to subsidize it. "Such power, if exercised in a public health option, eventually would produce a single-payer system," according to the Washington Post . If "that's where the country wants to go, it should do so explicitly, not by default," the editorial states. The Washington Post concludes, "Maybe it's possible to design a public option that aids consumers without undermining competition," but "it would be a huge mistake for the left to torpedo reform over this question" ( Washington Post , 4/27).
Health insurance industry advocates that "have been frantically arguing" against including a public insurance option want "a new and 'reformed' health insurance system that works essentially like ours does today," syndicated columnist Marie Cocco writes in a Denver Post opinion piece. She says that the health insurance industry has offered to stop charging higher premiums to people with pre-existing health conditions "if only Congress and the Obama administration would continue to go along with a system more like the one we have now than the one that we actually need." Cocco writes that "for some time, what we've done is take the same stale approach that relies on the private sector and the presumed magic of the market to cure our system's chronic failures," adding, "So far we have 'reformed' the health insurance system by reinforcing precisely what's wrong with it." Cocco writes, "To do this again would yield precisely the same result" -- not a reformed system but "just another way for the insurance industry to game the one we already have" (Cocco, Denver Post , 4/25).
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A New Zika Threat Hovers As Summer’s Mosquitoes Get Bzzzzy
By Shefali Luthra and Carmen Heredia Rodriguez May 30, 2017
(Courtesy of CDC’s Center for Global Health)
Zika, the mosquito-borne virus that triggered public health alarm bells last summer, has receded from the spotlight. But, experts say, expect the virus to pose a renewed threat this year.
How great of a threat? That’s where it gets tricky.
No locally acquired cases of the virus have been reported in the United States this year. But as public health agencies gear up for mosquito season, uncertainty remains around what resources states may need and whether they will receive adequate federal support. In addition, researchers still have questions about how the virus works and its long-term effects. These forces could complicate efforts to track outbreaks and provide accurate information about prevention and disease management.
“We still have much to learn. And much remains to be done,” Lyle Petersen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, said last week at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing.
This KHN story also ran in USA Today. It can be republished for free (details).
Zika, which can cause birth defects if contracted by pregnant women, is primarily transmitted by a mosquito more commonly found in southern areas of the country such as the Gulf Coast. Texas, Florida, Southern California and Louisiana were all deemed high-risk areas last year. It hit the Americas in 2015 and reached the United States via infected travelers.
Last year, 5,102 people in the United States were reported with the disease — most contracted the virus while traveling in South and Central America. Sixty-four babies in the U.S. have been affected since the government began reporting outcomes last June. In rare cases, people who had not traveled abroad contracted Zika through a local mosquito or through sexual contact. Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, had 34,963 cases in 2016.
Again this year, determining if areas are experiencing active Zika transmission will require active surveillance and testing — both of mosquitoes and of people potentially exposed. Most people who contract the virus don’t show visible symptoms.
Implementing that testing is challenging, experts said.
“Should you begin universal screenings in communities that are at risk?” asked Jeff Engel, executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, which represents the specialists working in public health departments. “That is a tough resource question and probably is not feasible.”
KHN Zika Coverage
— Federal Money For State-Level Zika Tracking, Prevention May End This Summer
— Sprint To Find Zika Vaccine Could Hinge On Summer Outbreaks
— In Puerto Rico, The Joy Of Pregnancy Is Tempered By Fear Of Zika
— In Light Of Zika Findings, Stepped-Up Monitoring Of Children’s Symptoms Urged
Click Here To Read More Of KHN’s Zika Coverage
Last year, Congress appropriated $1.1 billion toward fighting Zika. That was split among research, overseas response and state public health efforts. In April, the CDC warned state officials those federal dollars were running out. They are projected to last through the end of this fiscal year, in September.
Meanwhile, the White House budget released Tuesday proposes establishing an emergency fund to finance responses to outbreaks like Zika. But it also calls for a $1.3 billion cut to the CDC and slashes $838 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the agency behind vaccine development. So far, there has been little talk from Congress of approving extra funding.
“Funding from Congress has been critical for our response to Zika. However, additional support will be needed,” said Rick Bright, director of the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a subsidiary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, at the hearing.
Some advocates also warn an ongoing hiring freeze at HHS could limit the agency’s capacity to support a Zika response.
“Obviously we live in tough times when it comes to budget constraints,” said Tom Skinner, a CDC spokesman. “And we have to find creative ways to do the best we can with what we’re given.”
If those constraints thwart surveillance efforts this year, experts warned, it will make it harder to know precisely when Zika hits. That blind spot puts women of childbearing age — for whom the virus’ consequences are most dramatic — at greater risk. Reports highlight microcephaly as a significant consequence, but a burgeoning field of research suggests its impact on children may be broader, and may manifest years after a child is born.
“Without active surveillance — I’m worried we missed [many cases of] Zika last year and we’ll miss Zika this year,” said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston. “If you’re a woman of reproductive age, living on the Gulf Coast of the United States, or Arizona or Southern California, and you’re pregnant or might be pregnant — you don’t really know if Zika’s in your area or not.”
Texas, which experienced six cases of local Zika transmission last year, has identified counties it deems most vulnerable. All pregnant women in those areas are advised to get Zika screenings as part of their routine prenatal care. The state works with the CDC to monitor how many pregnant women test positive and intends to monitor babies born to mothers who experienced infection.
But long-term follow-up will probably require more funding, noted Chris Van Deusen, a spokesman for Texas’ Department of State Health Services. And leveraging prenatal care to push Zika testing has its own shortcomings. Many women most at risk are low-income, Van Deusen noted, and therefore less likely to interact with the health care system, or get prenatal care. Those people won’t be tested or accounted for in the state’s Zika tracking efforts.
That, Hotez said, compromises authorities’ ability to discover Zika when it hits and then get the word out. “The only way we identify Zika outbreaks like [last year’s] in South Florida is through serendipity,” he said.
Testing is another concern. Current tests are unreliable in identifying Zika among patients previously infected with related viruses, such as dengue.
(Courtesy of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health)
Limited resources could also strain the states’ ability to process tests efficiently. Last year, the volume of patient samples sent for Zika testing overwhelmed laboratories in some affected areas, noted Kelly Wroblewski, director of infectious disease at the Association of Public Health Laboratories.
The surge translated to delays in determining if women had Zika. That could continue this year, since universal testing in affected areas is a burden that many of these labs don’t have the resources to meet.
If the virus spreads, Wroblewski said, “we may find a capacity gap.”
Many states also lack the infrastructure to adequately address an outbreak. Surveillance of mosquito-borne diseases is virtually nonexistent in many states, according to a 2014 report from the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. Mosquito surveillance among states dropped from 96 percent in 2004 to 80 percent in 2012. In many areas, mosquito eradication has shrunk along with dwindling public health budgets.
“We need better mosquito control methods, we need better surveillance,” Petersen said at last week’s hearing. “We need to develop more of a nationally standard approach to vector control and laboratory testing. … This will require a sustained effort to rebuild infrastructure.”
The scarcity of resources is compounded by scientists’ limited knowledge of the virus.
Experts are “discovering new things every day,” particularly regarding how the virus plays out after birth, Engel said. Beyond an obvious condition like microcephaly — which results in an abnormally small head and brain impairment — it’s tough to say just how consequential the disease can be. Preliminary work suggests children without microcephaly whose mothers carried the virus may have developmental issues later in life. But the extent of those issues — and the odds they do in fact manifest — is unclear. And limited knowledge about how Zika interacts with similar viruses means available tests aren’t always accurate.
“Unfortunately, it’s the problem with these rapidly emerging diseases; you can’t get the research up quickly enough to get the best answers,” said Scott Weaver, director of the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
Because Zika’s long-term consequences remain murky, states are trying to keep tabs on children whose mothers tested positive. Beyond Texas, Louisiana is also tracking children for at least three years after birth, even if they don’t show obvious symptoms. But that assumes a surveillance system is robust enough to track all mothers who carried the virus. It also assumes sufficient resources to keep monitoring children. Those, experts said, are hardly guaranteed. And they still might not be enough.
“It’s going to take a generation of pediatric neurologists to study and sort this out,” Hotez said. “This is just the beginning.”
Shefali Luthra: ShefaliL@kff.org, @Shefalil
Carmen Heredia Rodriguez: CarmenH@kff.org, @ByCHRodriguez
Public Health Preventive Services Zika
Shefali Luthra, Kaiser Health News and Carmen Heredia Rodriguez, Kaiser Health News
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Home Home PM Abbasi rejects US accusations about safe havens in Pakistan
PM Abbasi rejects US accusations about safe havens in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has brushed aside US accusations that Pakistan provides sanctuary to militant groups, saying that attacks in the region were originating from Afghanistan.
In an interview in Islamabad with Bloomberg News, a New York-based international news agency, he said Pakistan would act against terrorists found within its borders, including the Haqqani network.
“We have asked them to share any intelligence about the Haqqani network, we will take action,” Abbasi said, referring to the US. The Prime Minister said the attacks however were being made from across the border.
“We have pinpointed even the sanctuaries of the attackers. Cross-border infiltration from Afghanistan is the order of the day,” he said.
“There is no room for them to take a tough stance here, because Pakistan is the country which is fighting the war on terror,” the Pakistani leader said. “Somebody gives us intelligence and we will act upon it. It is our war, not theirs.”
When asked if Pakistan would move against Taliban leaders who have allegedly lived for years in Quetta, Abbasi said, “we will act against them if they really exist.”
Abbasi reiterated that Trump’s troop increase and support to Afghanistan will end in failure and urged the Afghan government and the Taliban to agree to peace talks.
“We have assured them of whatever assistance we would be able to offer, but things are quite fragmented on that side,” he said. “Pakistan has tried twice, but the talks have been sabotaged.”
When his attention was drawn to the court-ordered release of Hafiz Saeed, Abbasi said, “The court, a three-judge bench, has released him saying there are no charges against him, the country has a law you know.”
“Prosecute him internationally if there is substance to these charges, these are accusations only. No evidence has been provided by India,” he said. – APP
Hafiz Saeed
Haqqani Network
US accusations
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Unregistered madaris not to be allowed to function: Shafqat
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Fults, Illinois facts for kids
Name origin: Jacob Fults, early settler
- land 0.07 sq mi (0 km²)
- water 0.00 sq mi (0 km²)
411.2 /sq mi (159 /km²)
CST (UTC-6)
- summer (DST) CDT (UTC-5)
Location in Monroe County and the state of Illinois.
Location of Illinois in the United States
Wikimedia Commons: Fults, Illinois
Fults is a village in the Renault precinct of Monroe County, Illinois, United States. The population was 28 at the 2000 census. It is located entirely within the American Bottom floodplain.
Fults is located at Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:mw' not found. (38.165688, -90.214395).
According to the 2010 census, the village has a total area of 0.07 square miles (0.18 km2), all land.
The village was named after Jacob Fults, born in Pennsylvania in 1793, to German immigrants. Fults, after leaving the service of the United States during the War of 1812 in 1817, settled on Moredock Lake. He then moved to the Renault precinct, first up Braun's Hollow, then in 1829 to the settlement known at the time as Braunsberg, which would eventually take his name, until his death in 1841.
A site on the bluffs just north of Fults, overlooking the Bottoms is known as Saltpetre Cave and took its name from the quantities of bat guano mined there for potassium nitrate which was used in the local manufacture of black powder by the French at Fort de Chartres and later inhabitants. This cave, cut into the side of the bluffs, and an excellent defensive position, was one of the last refuges for Native Americans in the region. It was a popular site in the area for rappelling and hiking, until access to it was restricted in the aftermath of the Great Flood of 1993 and several accidents at the site.
1950 120 36.4%
1960 90 −25.0%
2010 26 −7.1%
Est. 2015 26 0.0%
As of the census of 2000, there were 28 people, 9 households, and 8 families residing in the village. The population density was 411.2 people per square mile (154.4/km²). There were 10 housing units at an average density of 146.9 per square mile (55.2/km²). The racial makeup of the village was 100.00% White.
There were 9 households out of which 33.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 88.9% were married couples living together, and 11.1% were non-families. No households were made up of individuals and none had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.11 and the average family size was 3.25.
In the village, the population was spread out with 21.4% under the age of 18, 21.4% from 18 to 24, 25.0% from 25 to 44, 28.6% from 45 to 64, and 3.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 41 years. For every 100 females there were 100.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 120.0 males.
The median income for a household in the village was $47,813, and the median income for a family was $48,438. Males had a median income of $33,750 versus $0 for females. The per capita income for the village was $11,389. None of the population and none of the families were below the poverty line.
Illinois Metro-East region
Major Cities (25,000+)
Cities (5,000-25,000)
Villages and Towns (1,000-5,000)
Fairmont City
Rosewood Heights
St. Jacob
Wamac
Interstates in the Metro-East
Airports/Military Bases
MidAmerica St. Louis Airport
St. Louis Downtown Airport
St. Louis Metro-East Airport
St. Louis Regional Airport
List of Colleges in the Metro-East
Kaskaskia College
Lewis and Clark Community College
McKendree University
Southwestern Illinois College
Sports teams based in the Metro East
Gateway Grizzlies (baseball: Frontier League)
Municipalities and communities of Monroe County, Illinois, United States
County seat: Waterloo
Columbia‡
Hecker‡
Burksville
Burksville Station
Chaflin Bridge
Foster Pond
Madonnaville
Fults, Illinois Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.
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Little Spain facts for kids
Little Spain was a Spanish American neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan during 20th century.
"Little Spain" was 14th Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. A very different slice of Chelsea existed on a stretch of 14th Street often referred to by residents as "Calle Catorce," or "Little Spain". The Church of Our Lady of Guadelupe (No. 299) was founded in 1902, when Spaniards started to settle in the area. Although the Spanish business have given way to such nightclubs as Nell's and Oh Johnny on the block between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, the Spanish food and gift emporium known as Casa Moneo has been at 210 West 14th since 1929. In 2010 the documentary Little Spain, directed and written by Artur Balder, was filmed in New York City. The documentary pulled together for first time an archive that reveals the untold history of the Spanish-American presence in Manhattan. The archive contains more than 450 photographs and 150 documents that have never been publicly displayed. They present the history of the streets of Little Spain in New York City throughout the 20th Century. The archive contains more than 450 photographs and 150 documents that have never been publicly displayed. They present the history of the streets of Little Spain in New York City throughout the 20th Century.
Other important commerces and Spanish business of Little Spain were restaurants like La Bilbaína, Trocadero Valencia, Bar Coruña, Little Spain Bar, Café Madrid, Mesón Flamenco, or El Faro Restaurant, established 1927, and still today open at 823 Greenwich St. The Iberia was a famous Spanish dress shop.
The heart of the Spanish American community in that area were the two landmarks the Spanish Benevolent Society and the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, founded at the turn of the 19th century, being the first parish in Manhattan with mass in Latin and Spanish.
Virginia Admiral and her son, Robert Mario De Niro Jr., moved to a top floor studio at the 219 West 14th Street, owned by the Galician entrepreneur José García. According with the investigations, Robert De Niro was living during the 50s at the heart of Little Spain after the divorce of his parents.
Little Spain Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.
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34-year-old Michal has a good job in a Warsaw accounting firm, a nice apartment, an understanding wife and a 7-year-old son. But on his son’s first Communion, he is forced to go back to his childhood home on an errand by his boss. He wants to finish his work as fast as he can, but the trip becomes a turning point that makes him look back on his city life. The unexpected car accident forces Michal to linger longer than he had planned in the small community he left behind. With time on his hands, he strolls through the familiar streets, running into old friends and hanging out in the same haunts where he had once played music with his rock band. As bittersweet memories flood his consciousness, it becomes clear he had wanted to study music but instead took the more practical path to achieve finanical success in the corporate world. Conversations with both his father and the bandmate he abandoned lead him to reevaluate his past—and his future—as he reluctantly confronts the possibility that he has made some big mistakes.
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Tag Archive: hermaphroditos
Hermaphroditos
Filed under: Goddess Spirituality — 1 Comment
“Hermaphroditos’ themes are balance, masculinity, femininity, honor, reason and leadership. Symbols are two-sided items and Yin/Yang symbols. This androgynous deity was once the son of Hermes, but he loved the nymph Salmakis so much that the lovers became one body and soul, neither the male nor the female being discernible. In this form, Hermaphroditos reminds us that the Goddess is also God, blending the best of both sexes together into powerful, productive energy.
At the midpoint of the year we take a moment’s pause from the Goddess to honor Her consort and other half, the God, represented by fathers everywhere. Take time to thank the special men in your life and pamper them today. Ask Hermaphroditos to show you the Goddess within them, and how God and Goddess work together, making each person unique.
In magic traditions, the God aspect is the conscious, logical force of the universe who offers us the attributes of leadership, reason and focus.
This persona and energy is part of the Goddess – one cannot be serparated from the other.
This is a good day to look withing yourself, find both aspects of the divine and concentrate on bringing them into balance. If you’re normally headstrong, back off a bit. If you’re normally a wallflower, get daring! If you like to plan, become spontaneous – and so forth. Hermaphroditos will show you the way.”
“The Nymph Salmacis and Hermaphroditus” by François-Joseph Navez
“In Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus was the son of Hermes, messenger of the gods, and Aphrodite, Goddess of love. The boy was so beautiful that a nymph named Salmacis fell in love with him and prayed that they would be united forever. The gods granted her the wish one day when Hermaphroditus came to the fountain where she lived. As he was bathing, Salmacis embraced him and pulled him underneath the water, and their bodies merged into one. The result was a person with the figure and breasts of a woman but with the sex organs of a man.
Other versions of the story claim that any man who bathed in the fountain was transformed into a half man, half woman just like Hermaphroditus. It was also said that the waters of the fountain caused anyone who drank from it to grow weak. The original story appears in the [Book IV of] Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid. The English writer Edmund Spenser includes the notion of such a pool, which weakened those who drank from it, in the Faerie Queene.” [1]
“Hermaphroditus’ name is derived from those of his parents, Aphrodite and Hermes [and is the basis for the word hermaphrodite]. All three of these gods figure largely into the Greek tradition of fertility gods and all possess distinctly sexual overtones. Sometimes, Hermaphroditus is referred to as Aphroditus. Half-siblings of Hermaphroditus include the phallic god Priapus and the youthful god of desire Eros.
Contrary to Patricia Telesco’s account, another version of Hermaphroditus’ story goes like this: “Hermaphroditus was raised by nymphs on Mount Ida, a sacred mountain in Phrygia. At the age of fifteen, he grew bored of his surroundings and traveled the cities of Lycia and Caria. It was in the woods of Caria that he encountered Salmacis the Naiad in her pool. She is overcome by lust for the boy, and tries to seduce him, but is rejected. When he thinks her to be gone, Hermaphroditus undresses and enters the waters of the empty pool. Salmacis springs out from behind a tree and jumps into the pool. She wraps herself around the boy, forcibly kissing him and touching his breast. While he struggles, she calls out to the gods in prayer that they should never part. Her wish is granted, and their bodies blend into one intersexual form. Hermaphroditus, in his grief, makes his own prayer: cursing the pool so that any other who bathes within it shall be transformed as well.” [3]
“Salmacis and Hermaphroditus” by Jean François de Troy
Salmacis is a very interesting character to me. “In Greek mythology, Salmacis was an atypical naiad who rejected the ways of the virginal Greek goddess Artemis in favour of vanity and idleness. Her attempted rape of Hermaphroditus places her as the only nymph rapist in the Greek mythological canon (though see also Dercetis).
‘There dwelt a Nymph, not up for hunting or archery:
unfit for footraces. She the only Naiad not in Diana’s band.
Often her sisters would say: “Pick up a javelin, or
bristling quiver, and interrupt your leisure for the chase!”
But she would not pick up a javelin or arrows,
nor trade leisure for the chase.
Instead she would bathe her beautiful limbs and tend to her hair,
with her waters as a mirror.’
Ovid, Metamorphoses. Book IV, 306-312.
“The Water Nymph” by Herbert James Draper
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, she becomes one with Hermaphroditus, and Hermaphroditus curses the fountain to have the same effect on others. However, it’s very likely that Ovid fabricated the entire tale himself – his use of ‘praetereo, dulcique animos novitate tenebo’ could be read in several ways, as ‘novitate’ could be translated as either something strange or something new, which would imply that it was a new tale. Salmacis could also have been intended simply as a contrast to the previous tales in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as others involve a dominant male pursuing an elusive female.” [4]
One blogger writes that this minor Greco-Roman deity of bisexuality, effeminacy, sexuality and fertility “except for one myth of his own life appears no where else in Greek or Roman mythology . His character suggests very little about his personality. Hermaphroditus is literally the combination of the male and female aspects, which I suppose, depending on how you look at it, can be both a positive and a negative trait. But considering his final wish, Hermaphroditus sounds like an angry and bitter person, one who wishes others ill in order to make them suffer the pain he also suffered. There was no logical reason for him to ask for the pool to be cursed (but then, when has anything truly been logical in myths?)” [5]
Herm of Aphroditus at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.
“The oldest traces of the cult in Greek countries are found in Cyprus. Here, according to Macrobius (Saturnalia, iii. 8), there was a bearded statue of a male Aphrodite, called Aphroditos by Aristophanes. Philochorus in his Atthis (ap. Macrobius loc. cit.) further identified this divinity, at whose sacrifices men and women exchanged garments, with the Moon. A terracotta plaque from the 7th century BC depicting Aphroditos was found in Perachora, which suggests it was an archaic cult.
The deification and the origins of the cult of hermaphrodite beings stem from Eastern religions (see Ardhanarishvara – the composite androgynous form of the Hindu god Shiva and his consort Parvat), where the hermaphrodite nature expressed the idea of a primitive being that united both genders. This double sex also attributed to Dionysus and Priapus – the union in one being of the two principles of generation and conception – denotes extensive fertilizing and productive powers.
This Cyprian Aphrodite is the same as the later Hermaphroditos, which simply means Aphroditos in the form of a herm (see Hermae), and first occurs in the Characters (16) of Theophrastus. After its introduction at Athens (probably in the 5th century BCE), the importance of this deity seems to have declined. It appears no longer as the object of a special cult, but limited to the homage of certain sects, expressed by superstitious rites of obscure significance.” [6]
Hellenica, “Hermaphroditus“.
Myths Encyclopedia, “Hermaphroditus“.
Sita. A Witchy Life, “Weekly Deity: Hermaphroditus“.
Wikipedia, “Hermaphroditus“.
Wikipedia, “Salmacis“.
Theoi Greek Mythology, “HERMAPHRODITOS“.
Wikipedia, “Aphroditus“.
Wikipedia, “Metamorphoses“.
Wikipedia, “Salmacis (fountain)“.
Tags: androgynous, aphrodite, aphroditus, artemis, balance, dercetis, dionysus, eros, femininity, god, goddess, greek mythology, hermaphrodite, hermaphroditos, hermaphroditus, hermes, honor, leadership, masculinity, mercury, priapus, reason, roman mythology, salmacis, salmkis, transgender, two sided items, venus, yin yang
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Exit This Way: An Interview with Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
Joy Horowitz interviews Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
IN SARA LAWRENCE-LIGHTFOOT’S office at Harvard, the color purple is everywhere. The lavender rug and desk chair and the giant amethyst stone on her desk reveal a flair for the regal and dramatic, a flair taken up by the revered sociology professor herself, who sports long, dangling earrings, giant coral rings on each hand, and a bright, orange silk jacket.
The recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant” in 1984, Lawrence-Lightfoot has been on the faculty of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education since 1972, and she will be the first African-American woman in Harvard’s history to have an endowed chair in her name — upon her retirement in four years.
Perhaps in anticipation of that moment, her most recent book, Exit: The Endings that Set Us Free, is an elegant examination of how our culture exalts beginnings at the expense of proper goodbyes.
It is a simple but profound idea — that an inadequate exit might leave us feeling bereft and alone. I did some deep thinking on the issue a few months ago when packing up the house in Santa Monica where my husband and I have lived for nearly 30 years. We lovingly built our California Craftsman–style home, and it was there that we raised our three children. Now we were preparing to drive across country and move back to Cambridge, Massachusetts, the place where we first met and fell in love. It seemed like a romantic idea, and freeing too — a new life in the New England foliage, far from the maddening traffic and Botox-loving moms of Los Angeles. This was an adventure I had chosen, but I found myself flooded with self-doubt and almost paralyzed at the prospect of saying goodbye to so many and so much.
Moving on invariably involves loss. Being able to say goodbye “with grace and gratitude,” says Lawrence-Lightfoot, might make it hurt less.
In Exit, Lawrence-Lightfoot reports that, as a culture, we end up saying more than our shares of goodbye. Demographers predict that young adults will have 10 careers, not jobs, in their lifetimes. It is critical that they develop a meaningful language for making exits, Lawrence-Lightfoot writes, because the smaller exits groom us for the bigger ones to come.
In thinking about exits, Lawrence-Lightfoot examines home, freedom, yearning, and grace. She presents portraits of a wide variety of Americans at different crossroads, all of them searching for “the generativity of exit.”
Joy Horowitz: You talk about the need to practice the smaller goodbyes in order to make the larger farewells meaningful. So how do we do that?
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot: I think we, as a culture, do this poorly. I think there’s a way in which, everyday, we can learn to be attentive to entrances and departures. We can work on our awareness. We can make a habit of noticing those moments that become memorable because of something that happens afterwards or before. Developing respect, a kind of reverence even, for time and space, for coming together and parting — this can be taught in families. It can even be taught in classrooms.
To say goodbye is to live in the existential present. Nothing else can help us in quite the same way prepare for the life-altering exits, the ones that demand a kind of ritualized, deep attention in order for us to use that space as a generative moment to move onto the next moment.
JH: In your book you discuss the paradoxical nature of exiting and how it’s often defined by a sense of push-pull — learning to deal with this push-pull is something psychoanalyst Erik Erickson defines as a stage of developmental progress. As an example you tell the story of a 55-year-old woman who has carefully planned her exit from a nonprofit after 25 years. When she leaves, she is still flooded with regret.
SLL: I think exits are surrounded by a very central conflict that causes enormous ambivalence and sometimes terror and dread in all of us. In order to progress we need to deal with the feelings that pull us backwards even as events push us forward. Resolving this conflict or even recognizing it is a part of exiting well.
This happens of course when we leave a job or say goodbye to a person. But it also happens internally, when an individual is going through some kind of change or development. That’s what Erikson helps us with. He identifies eight major stages of conflict in the life span from birth to death, where, in order to move forward, we have to leave.
There are lots of reasons why exits are hard. Society is so preoccupied with launchings and entrances and moving forward and meeting the next opportunity and tilting toward the future, which take our attention away from departures and leave takings. So we tend to interpret those leave takings as regressions, as failures, as negative spaces in our life journey. We associate the feeling brought on by exits with not doing very well.
JH: I was struck by what you wrote in the book about how the American narrative is so much about the immigrant experience — about leaving one place and arriving in another — as much as it is about new beginnings and opportunity.
SLL: Missing the exit is to miss at least half the story. When my doctoral students come in — they’re 35, they’re smart, they’re focused, they’re critical — they like to begin by telling me what they want to do, what will be their next steps. I always say, “What are you leaving?” That, to me, is a better marker to understand them. And often, when they tell me about the past, they have tears in their eyes. Coming here, it was terribly hard for them to leave their family for whatever they’re doing here.
JH: Could you talk a bit about how you see the difference between a forced exit versus one that is planned?
SLL: It’s harder for people who are forced out. But either way, people have to deal with the same things — the people who remain in the job site, at the workplace, in the institution — they cut off contact with you. The person forced to leave feels isolated, partly because they feel they’ve failed. They’re angry. They’re scared about the future and worried if there is a future or not. There is disassociation, confusion, isolation.
As for people who think of themselves as composing an exit — they imagine a life ahead that doesn’t become their reality. Even if they planned for a time to just sit and veg and dream and play, that’s a hard thing to get through when you’ve been programmed for diligence and purposefulness and institutional connection.
One of the reasons I wanted to write this book is we have to help people learn how to do this in a way that doesn’t feel debilitating. The confusion and disorientation is part of the plan, part of the journey. And we need to be able to tolerate that.
JH: What’s the genesis of the book? Is it an outgrowth of your last book, The Third Chapter, about new learning between 50 and 75?
SLL: Exit came from a feeling I always had in my heart that people didn’t do this saying goodbye very well. My parents, who were highly ritualized in every way with their kids, insisted on certain protocols. You’d leave and you’d have to stand up and shake the person’s hand and look into his eyes. You’d have to say goodbye and be thankful. Summoning grace and gratefulness at that moment — they trained us to do that.
My parents were also very embracing people. Very physical. So exits had a physicality — hugging and cuddling and see you later. My mother was a physician; my father was a professor. They were both social activists and they didn’t have a lot of time together. They would go on postprandial walks (that’s what my father called them). And they would not allow us to come. This was their time alone. This was after dinner. We lived in the country. So they were taking a walk in the country. Even then it was a big deal about saying goodbye. Even at that ordinary moment that was anticipated every single day. It was a leave taking. So I think this must have been embedded in me.
And I know, as a mom, I wanted to do that with my children. I wanted them to know that these moments of exit were as important as their entrances. Everyday I’d look at their backs as they were leaving for school to see whether they’d be strong enough to take on this day, which was sure to be imperfect because every day is. My mother always said her favorite view of her children was of our backs: you need to be strong moving into the world and are you ready?
JH: Your book also discusses the question of how to extricate oneself from a professional relationship. Linda, the psychotherapist, says she thinks of how she’ll terminate with a patient as soon as they meet. And, you point out, sociologists and journalists clamor for access to their subjects without considering how to say goodbye properly.
SLL: Gaining access is so potentially aggressive and intrusive and self-serving. But when the encounter is all over, when you’ve collected your data, what about the exit? What are the ethical and moral responsibilities of the moment? As a student of sociology and anthropology, I’ve had to ask myself, Hey, wait a minute. Why is no one talking about this?
As a doctoral student, I spent a year in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the early 1970s in the classroom of two second-grade teachers. The civil rights movement was at its peak. These were black teachers teaching poor, black kids. I wanted to understand the relationship between their social and political ideologies and the social systems they were trying to sustain inside the classroom.
One day the music teacher didn’t appear, and I was asked to do music with the kids. So we sat in a circle. I taught them some civil rights songs, some Negro spirituals: We Shall Overcome, the soundtrack of our lives at that point. And they loved it, and I loved it. Then I retreated to the shadows of my research position. The day I was leaving I asked the teachers if there was anything I might do in terms of saying goodbye. They said the less we make of it the better. Just say thank you, you enjoyed being there. So I did that, but I felt this was not a good way of saying goodbye. But I was a doctoral student, after all, not calling the shots.
So I left after saying goodbye to other teachers and the principal. As I drove back to Boston, I began crying. I was sad to leave the kids, but I was also crying because I hadn’t left well. And I remember putting on Ray Charles and blasting up the highway. I stopped for gas about halfway back to Boston, and I heard some rustling in the back seat. And there was Ivory, this little gorgeous dark-skinned girl from one of the classes, who had found her way into my unlocked car and kept quiet the whole way. And I said, “What are you doing here?” I was just in shock. And she said, “You didn’t say goodbye.”
I drove Ivory back and took her hand and walked down the steps to her teacher’s house in a working-class neighborhood of Springfield. I asked Ivory, “So how should we say goodbye?” And she said, “We can sing We Shall Overcome.” She was looking for the sense of ritual. Some kind of closure that’s artistic, that’s celebratory, that allows emotion to enter. For me, things become ritual through music. And so Ivory was in my craw as I began this book.
JH: Some people just can’t stand to say goodbye.
SLL: In the act of exiting, it’s much harder to say what you want and be deliberate. People say the only exit that matters is death, but I don’t believe that. These are many opportunities to learn to leave with grace and gratitude. The more we do it, the more likely we’ll have the strength to endure the disorientation and chaos in that liminal space before we figure out the next part of our life journey.
JH: You’ve put enormous pressure on yourself in anticipation of your departure from this institution. It’s like here you are, the authority on exiting beautifully.
SLL: I started teaching when I was 26 years old, and I’ve been at it 40 years, so my professional life has always included much more than Harvard, thankfully. So maybe that will make the departure easier. But I fully expect to feel a sense of great sadness and loss in the midst of this. But I also hope I’m smart enough to compose a way of moving on that is less defined by the institution and more defined by me, so that I’m calling the shots and determining the losses and gains of this experience.
JH: Is your book a way of getting ready to have The Conversation with your children about your final farewell?
SLL: Let’s say I have begun to have that conversation with my children, who are 30 and 28. Like a lot of adults but not fully grown children, they still are, in many ways, financially dependent on me. So, now part of my conversation about retiring in four years from Harvard is, “Heads up, y’all. You’ll have to be in a different place in terms of your independence. Just, please please please please — get ready.” I think I haven’t had the death conversation because I have a mother who is 98 years old. She’s alive and beautiful and functioning. Quite crippled and her mind’s going and all of that. But she’s still behaving like a mother in lots of way. In my last visit, she asked me, “What’s the most compelling thing going on in your life right now?”
I think the story of the oncologist in the book is beautiful — he realizes the way to help his patients exit is to be in deep relationship with them. Not to separate from them. So good exits are about good relationships. You go the distance. You don’t avoid intimacy and connection and advocacy. Most important, you follow the lead of the person in making the exit: what do they want?
JH: You talk a lot about the paradox of exits.
SLL: Parting is such sweet sorrow. It really is. There’s a sadness even before you start eating that delicious thing. Or even before I hear the opening chords of the B-minor Mass, I’m already sad a little bit that it’s going to be over.
We need to recognize and even savor the sad moments that people tend to move through quickly. It takes courage to do it that way.
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Image courtesy of [Thomas Hawk via Flickr]
GOP Debate: Candidates Agree on One Thing, They Don’t Like the Media
By Kevin Rizzo | October 29, 2015
If you watched CNBC’s Republican Debate last night, you probably noticed the candidates’ general disdain for the media. It started off early and persisted throughout the night, as the candidates criticized the moderators’ questions and the mainstream media’s coverage of the campaign so far.
The first candidate to criticize the media was Marco Rubio. When moderator Carl Quintanilla asked him about an editorial in the Sun-Sentinal that called for Rubio’s resignation due to his attendance record at Senate votes during the campaign, Rubio responded saying, “I read that editorial today with a great amusement. It’s actually evidence of the bias that exists in the American media today.”
Rubio went on to criticize the editorial and the double standard that he believes people have been using to evaluate him. He noted that several past presidential candidates actually had worse attendance records while campaigning, yet the Sun-Sentinel endorsed them. He expanded his criticism to argue that the mainstream media is generally inhospitable to the modern conservative movement.
While Rubio has a point when it comes to peoples’ criticism of his voting record, it is extremely important to note that the article that he referenced as an example of media bias was an editorial, which typically contain opinions from the editorial board and are not the same as a general news article. In fact, there is very little evidence of partisan media bias in news coverage. As the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog pointed out on Twitter, a meta-analysis of media bias in presidential elections found virtually no evidence of partisan bias, particularly in newspapers and news magazines. While the media does have its biases, they generally do not fall along partisan or political lines, rather they are often a product of the economic constraints faced by news organizations.
Arguably the most notable example of a candidate attacking the media came from Ted Cruz, who went on a rant against the moderators and election coverage more generally. He said:
The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media…
This is not a cage match. And, you look at the questions — ‘Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?’ ‘Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?’ How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about?
Most of the criticism focused on the moderators and what critics argued were hostile questions. Cruz’s point captured the sentiment behind that criticism; he claimed that the debate focused more on personal disagreements and politics than substance.
In fairness to the moderators, Cruz made that comment in response to a question on his opposition to the recent Congressional compromise, which led Congress to raise the debt ceiling. By most standards, the debt ceiling is a substantive issue, and it is particularly relevant for Cruz as it allowed him to get at his tendency to use important votes–like the 2013 budget vote that led to a government shutdown–to talk about his agenda. Now, to Cruz’ credit, and regardless of how you feel about his positions, he did try to touch on important issues during Wednesday’s debate. His comments focused on his plan for a 10 percent flat tax, addressing the national debt, criticizing of the Federal Reserve, and a brief call to reinstate the gold standard. But regardless of his attempts to focus on real issues, the one quote that everyone seems to be focusing on his call-out of the moderators.
The media criticism wasn’t confined to Rubio and Cruz, though they did their fair share to bring it into the spotlight. Other candidates, notably Donald Trump and Chris Christie, spoke out against the moderators’ questions at several points during the debate. Afterward, the Republican National Committee (RNC) also expressed its displeasure with CNBC. Reince Priebus, the RNC Chairman, said that the network “should be ashamed of how this debate was handled.” He tweeted his criticism saying:
I will fight to ensure future debates allow for a more robust exchange. #GOPDebate
— Reince Priebus (@Reince) October 29, 2015
In spite of the moderators, I’m proud of our team for standing up against the improper and unprofessional display put on by CNBC. — Reince Priebus (@Reince) October 29, 2015
In a review of the debate’s transcript, Bloomberg noted that in contrast to September’s debate, the candidates were more willing to criticize the moderators than each other. The analysis also found that there was a total of 14 points during which the candidates attacked the “mainstream” media. In response to the rush of criticism, CNBC’s Vice President of Communications, Brian Steel, issued a brief but direct statement. He said, “People who want to be president of the United States should be able to answer tough questions.” Although many agree with the candidates and the RNC, not everyone has criticized the moderators’ performance. While both sides have their points, it’s also important to ask why exactly the candidates are so vocal in their opposition to the mainstream media.
Kevin Rizzo
Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.
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Home District of Columbia District Of Columbia County Washington Neil Ende
Free Consultation: (202) 895-1707Tap to Call This Lawyer
Neil Ende
Mr. Ende is a nationally recognized expert on telecommunications transactional, litigation and regulatory issues. Mr. Ende has served as counsel to many of the nation's telecommunications service providers, resellers and agents, payphone service providers, the nation's largest telecommunications management company, multimedia companies and numerous other companies involved in leading edge technology applications. In this capacity, Mr. Ende has negotiated hundreds of carrier and agency agreements, including agreements with every major telecommunications carrier. Mr. Ende also has successfully litigated complex telecommunications cases against each of the major long distance carriers and most of the Regional Bell Operating Companies in proceedings in state and federal courts and regulatory agencies across the country, the FCC, the American Arbitration Association ("AAA") and JAMS/Endispute. Mr. Ende, an AV-rated attorney (the highest available ratings for ability and ethics), currently represents major telecommunications carriers, resellers, agents, payphone service providers and associations, debit card providers, enhanced and VOIP services providers, third party verification service providers and other technology companies in a wide range of regulatory, transactional and litigation matters. Mr. Ende received his B.A. in political science, cum laude , from the University of Rochester in 1977 and his J.D., cum laude, from Boston College Law School in 1980. Mr. Ende is a regular contributor of feature articles to leading industry publications and he is a frequent speaker at major telecommunications industry conferences and meetings. Mr. Ende is a member of the Bar of the District of Columbia and is authorized to appear before the state and federal courts in that jurisdiction. Mr. Ende appears before courts in other jurisdictions across the country, where he is not a member of the bar, on a pro hac basis. Mr. Ende is also a member of the Federal Communications Bar As
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Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, Carl-Theodor-Straße 8, Düsseldorf, Germany
Dumont, Louise, Louise Dumont Actor Rebecca West
Ehrens, Arthur, Arthur Ehrens Actor Ulrik Brendel
Everth, Franz, Franz Everth Actor Kroll
Henckels, Paul, Paul Henckels Actor Peter Mortensgaard
Lindemann, Gustav, Gustav Lindemann Actor Johannes Rosmer
Stein, Josefa, Josefa Stein Actor Mrs. Helseth
Lindemann, Gustav, Gustav Lindemann Assistant Director
Lindemann, Gustav, Gustav Lindemann Director
großen Gesamtausgabe, Uebersetzung der, Uebersetzung der großen Gesamtausgabe Translator
Rosmersholm Rosmersholm 1906-11-26 Reopening 85870
Performed eight times in the season 1905/06, four times in the season 1906/07 (from 26 November 1906), three times in the season 1907/08 (from 15 November 1907), seven times in the season 1908/09 (from 25 November 1908), three times in the season 1909/10 (from 6 October 1909), nine times in the season 1910/11 (26 November 1910 - 5 July 1911), six times in the season 1911/12 (from 8 March 1912), six times in the season 1912/13 (from 19 March 1913), five times in the season 1914/15 (from 15 January 1915), once in the season 1915/16 (25 March 1916) and four times in the season 1916/17 (from 8 November 1916).
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Sergeant York (1941)
User Reviews (108)
Danlanham7 November 1999
It all adds up to a great film
The authentic portrayal of mountain life, an honorable protagonist portrayed by a great actor in his finest role, hard decisions in the time of war mixed with a healthy dose of levity, not to mention an outstanding supporting cast are just a few of the reasons why this film has always been my favorite movie. I am aware that this was a WWII propaganda film but I'm just idealistic enough that I buy the whole package.
Toopid119 August 2002
Garry Cooper + great script = Classic film
How does one define a classic film? It has been over 50 years since Sergeant York was made and It is still a joy to watch. Gary Cooper is, well, Gary Cooper. A Hollywood Icon and arguably one of the best actors ever. He gives a memorable, true to life portrayal of this simple back woods man thrust into a situation seemingly beyond his ability to comprehend. Alvin York was not an educated man, not a worldly man and not a great student of philosophy. Armed only with his dog-eared Bible and his own beliefs of right and wrong he must somehow balance his religious faith, his patriotic duty and his duty to his comrades. The script is well written. The performances are superb. This movie has action and humor and a warmth that touches one and all. Sergeant York stands the test of time. Whatever your definition, this is a classic.
bkoganbing20 February 2006
"Alvin, you've got the using kind of religion."
Alvin Cullom York (1887-1964), a modest American and Christian hero of World War I, is the subject of this biographical picture which goes beyond the mere telling of the tale how he won all the medals he did for bravery during the Meuse Argonne Offensive. It's the inner struggle of a man whose pacifist Christian beliefs came into conflict with his patriotism. It's the heart and soul of this film, beautifully crafted by director Howard Hawks.
The real Sergeant York eschewed all money making ventures that would have capitalized on his heroics in World War I and had resisted giving the rights to his story to Hollywood. He relented because in 1941 he became concerned with the danger fascism posed for the world and advocated preparedness. Part of what brought him out was the speechmaking of that other American hero Charles A. Lindbergh who was an appeasement advocate.
York even called the shots on who was to play him. So Jack Warner made a call to Adolph Zukor over at Paramount and probably paid one hefty sum for Gary Cooper's services. It was worth every penny of it as Cooper got his first Oscar for Best Actor.
Alvin York is a poor farmer supporting a widowed mother and a brother and sister. And he likes to cut loose every so often with a jug and a rifle. But he gets converted and gets involved in Walter Brennan's church which is a strict fundamentalist sort with pacifist tenets. When America gets into World War I, his very soul is tormented by the tenets of his church and the volunteer tradition of his state. Tennessee is known as the Volunteer State and that nickname is no lie. It bothers him more than other men because as Pastor Walter Brennan tells him he's "got the using kind of religion."
These people may be fundamentalists and somewhat backward, but they're not phonies. No high hog living preachers here, just simple people trying to get through life the best they can. Howard Hawks did a masterful job in casting this film with some actors very used to playing rustics. Ward Bond, Noah Beery, Jr. Howard DaSilva, Clem Bevans and most of all Walter Brennan as Pastor Rosier Pyle, tripling as preacher, postmaster, and owner of the general store. Brennan got an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, but since he'd already won three of them, the Academy voters gave Donald Crisp a break that year for How Green Was My Valley.
The York family is played by Margaret Wycherly, June Lockhart and Dickie Moore as mother, brother, and sister. Wycherly is one you'll remember also. Hard to believe this is the same woman who is also James Cagney's Ma in White Heat. Come to think of it, maybe not, Ma York and Ma Jarrett are both tough survivors.
As for the action that won him decorations from all the Allied powers including the Congressional Medal of Honor, you'll just have to see the film for that. But while some liberties are taken with York's pre-war story, what happened in the Argonne is actually what happened.
We could use a whole lot more Sergeant Yorks, those with the using kind of religion.
funkyfry3 November 2002
Involving war story
Heartfelt, involving saga of Tennessee's WWI hero Sgt. York. The first half of the story, almost a movie in itself, shows York in his native valley as he tries to get a nice plot of "bottom land", finds God, and learns that killing is wrong. In the second, York trains to become a soldier and decides that it's OK to die, or even kill, to preserve his freedom. Cooper carries the film's weight with conviction, painting the figure of a likeable, naive but intelligent, American hero. Hawks weaves the story's many threads together believably and with good humor.
ccthemovieman-128 September 2006
Values Like These Seldom Seen On Film Anymore
Perhaps when this comes out on DVD later in the year (2006), I'll enjoy this as I did when I first saw it on tape. Subsequent VHS viewings were nowhere as appealing at that first look, unfortunately. As most people know, this is the story of World War I hero Alvin York, who went from drunken good-for-nothing to solid Christian man and war hero.
Gary Cooper certainly was a great choice for the role. Few people in his era were better at playing modest, soft-spoken-but-manly heroes like "Coop." When "York" makes no apology for his 100 percent belief in the Bible, no one challenges him because he's earned the respect from all, believers and non- believers. Cooper's status as an actor helps make that all the more "believable." Sgt. York also gives one of the best examples of forgiveness I've ever seen on film.
Another nice feature of this movie is seeing Joan Leslie in the female lead. She was one of the most pretty and wholesome-looking ladies of her day. She's always a treat to see. Walter Brennan also is interesting, as usual, and in here plays a minister, which also was a surprise.
Much of this film was a surprise because I'm just not used to seeing on film things like true forgiveness, the hero citing Scripture, military officers shown in a compassionate light (letting York, with his pacifistic views, decide what he anted to do) etc. What a shame so few films in the last 50 years have had similar values.
JRobert23 October 1998
Still a Great Classic ,Oscar winning Performance for Cooper...
..SGT.YORK...yeah, it was released during WW2,to help the war effort, but it was a true story of the backwoods young man who really did not want to to go to war..and kill others in combat, which at first got him in some trouble.... But, did become a true hero and earned an Oscar for star Gary Cooper. The BEST part of the movie is before..York is drafted and first decides to hide in the hills ...Ward Bond, Walter Brennen are just two favorites that play important roles. The beautiful outdoor scenes in wonderful black and white, in the first of the film is unforgettable along with the fun and realistic setting of York's pursuit of his future wife and a piece of farm land,and the troubles he encounters before...going to war. Another 194O's classic with a lot of heart and soul, along with lots of entertainment value!.
Falcon-5129 May 2000
"Sergeant York" is my favorite classic movie. Gary Cooper stars as Sergeant Alvin York one of the most revered hero's in World War I. The movie takes you through his life from the days when he was a lot less responsible. When he drank a lot and had a short fuse, but ends when he become a hero of the war. The black and white picture enhances the beautiful cinematography in the film. Keep in mind most of the film revolves around his life before the war and so you get to see a lot of the fantastic scenery.
Gary Cooper won himself a well deserved Oscar for the film, but there were some other fine performances in the film. Walter Brennan, the star of almost 200 other films, plays York's small town Pastor, Rosier Pile. Young Joan Leslie plays the part of Gracie Williams who later marries York. Then there is Ward Bond in one of his many films (Over 250 of them I believe). Now a little for the trivia books. Cooper was 41 when he made this film and Leslie was only 16, but this is fairly consistent with the true ages of York and Gracie when they were beginning their relationship. So the film tries to be very accurate and honest. You won't find that in a modern film.
If you have not seen "Sergeant York" then you have yet to see one of the most touching films of all time. It is as much an attention holder today as it was back in 1941 and makes an excellent Memorial Day film which is in fact the best time to try and catch it if you happen to have cable and some of those classic film channels.
rvm-210 November 2001
Excellent performance by Cooper
Gary Cooper turned in an incredible performance in this movie. Although I've been familiar with his name for as long as I can remember, I was a little unsure as to why he was so highly regarded as an actor. Now I know. Just watch his face throughout this movie - he's incredibly expressive in communicating York's confusion and emotions during the changes he goes through.
That said, it's somewhat unfortunate that the movie simplified York's life (eg. in reality, he was stuck with a hefty mortgage on that nice house). The lightning-bolt incident didn't happen, either. But these are minor complaints, as the movie stays true to the key events of York's amazing story.
stac3630522 January 2005
I love this movie!
I love this movie! It is a heartwarming story of a man coming to terms with entering a war right after he receives his new found pacifist ideas. It also shows how a mother's love is everlasting no matter how her child acts. We were required to watch this movie in a history class, and I admit I thought it was going to be dumb. I ended up being drawn into the story, so I recommended it to my family. I watch this movie any time I get a chance. My entire family ends up walking around using their backwood mountain accent for days after we watch the movie. If I could find it on DVD or video, I would definitely purchase this film.
classicsoncall11 November 2006
"That ain't no rookie, that's Buffalo Bill!"
When you hear it said that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, it's the story of "Sergeant York" that might have been the inspiration. I'd been on the lookout for this film for some time when it appeared today on Turner Classic Movies as part of a Veteran's Day tribute. I tried to picture the real life hero Alvin York on the battlefield amid enemy fire pulling off the ruse that led to the capture of one hundred thirty two enemy soldiers, and all because a superior officer ordered him to take charge. Perhaps he should have been ordered to win the war.
I would like to have seen the real Alvin York, he must have been quite the extraordinary person. Not in a celebrity fashion, but in a deep spiritual sense, to have integrated his pacifist background with a sense of loyalty and brotherhood with his fellow soldiers. I can think of no other man you would want more in your corner when the chips are down and it's a matter of life or death.
Gary Cooper's Best Actor Oscar was well deserved for his portrayal of Sergeant York. He's convincing throughout as he transforms York from a rabble rousing back woods country hick to a principled man of values and ideals. The scenes where he records his meager earnings in hopes of buying some fertile downland is nearly heartbreaking, made even more poignant when he later makes amends with the men who essentially betrayed him.
Cooper is backed up with a fine supporting cast, but I have to admit I wound up chuckling a time or two when Walter Brennan's pastor character appeared. For some reason, those bushy black eyebrows called to mind an image of Groucho Marx that I just couldn't shake. Margaret Wycherly brings a matriarch's knowing instincts to the part of Mother York, somehow knowing that her son would eventually get his own patch of land someday, even when her own husband's experience seemed to suggest otherwise.
It was somewhat surprising yet gratifying at the same time to learn that the real Alvin York shunned all attempts to cash in on his name and hero status in order to get back to his home and family responsibilities. When he finally relented to numerous requests to make a film of his war time achievements, he had only two conditions - that all of the proceeds go to religious charities, and that the actor to portray him would be Gary Cooper. I'd say he cut a square deal.
picicici3 April 2001
Hooray for Gary Cooper.
The worst war movies were made during the war, but the best ones too. This seems to be a paradoxity but if we think a little bit about this statement we find that this is obvious. If we compare the bad war films with the good ones we find only one difference, but this difference is fundamental: the matter of the actors. And Gary Cooper is a great actor. His personality guarantees the standard high quality all over the movie. He plays a farmer from Tennessee who wants to guarantee a comfortable life for himself and his love (beautiful: Joan Leslie) but the United States declares war to Germany and he has to enlist to the army. The first half of the movie is full of eye-popping black-and-white sceneries and great, laughable characters and situations. I love the character of George York (Alvin York's younger brother, played by Dickie Gibson) the most. That scene is so cool where he finds Alvin at the bar, which is settled on the border of Tennessee and Kentucky, and forces his brother to go home. He has a big gun in his hands for safety sake. These people are simple farmers, they live in peace and harmony, don't care much about the rest of the world (they don't even heard about the World War), they live by the rules of the Bible.
There is a great battle scene at the second half of the movie. Alvin realizes that the war is similar to the turkey hunting, kills lot of German soldiers and becomes a national hero and the most decorated American soldier of the WWI. This film is great because it's lack of unnecessary patriotism and heroism. It's about the duty we have to fulfill because there are situations in life when our personal happiness is less important than the freedom of others. Alvin C. York realizes this and goes to a war against a country which he has never heard of and protects people whom he has never met. That's why he is a great man. And when he fulfilled his duty he goes home to the well-earned peace and comfort. And when Gary Cooper fulfilled his duty and gave a superb performance as Alvin York, he got the well-earned Academy Award for the Best Actor.
dentonsfarm24 September 2005
In My Top 10 List
This film really shows Howard Hawk's flair for story telling. Turner didn't have to put this masterpiece in color for it to be colorful. The characters are extremely memorable, such as Walter Brennan as Pastor Pyle. I believe there was a comment made on IMDb that Sergent York was an Ozark hillbilly. I would like to correct that because in fact and according to the movie he was from the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee. The Ozarks are around Oklahoma and Arkansas.
However, to get back to what I was say about the film, it is perhaps one of the greatest films ever made. It is for sure, an under rated film by the American Film Institute. Why it was never placed in the top 100, I don't know. Or, why Michael Medved never placed it in his top 10 list of greatest Christian films.
On top of this it is a good family film with extremely high redeeming values. The war scenes toward the last half of the film have some mildly violent images, compared to now days. I'm saying this because there are some families out there who may not want to subject there children to any violence what so ever, not even on screen.
var-112 April 2002
Gary Cooper wasn't the only great actor in this movie.
I feel one of the great strengths of this movie are the actors who played in the supporting character rolls. Joan Leslie, who must at this time only of been a teen ager, as York's wife. Margaret Wycherly as his mother was most compelling. Walter Brennan was just simply great. Add in George Tobias and Ward Bond to help cement the story and you see how they gave Gary Cooper the power of the main character.
MartinHafer6 February 2010
Unabashedly sentimental and patriotic...this brought a tear to my eye.
As a film that Hollywood made in anticipation of our eventual involvement in WWII, this film was magical and sure did its job in rallying Americans to the cause. The film is a propaganda masterpiece and can't help but affect the viewer. While I am sure many today might laugh at its sentimentality and clichés or some might get angry at its unabashed Americanism, the fact is that this is a brilliantly made film. Heck, by the end of the film, I found myself all choked up--even though I knew that the real story of Sergeant York was a bit different (though he still was an amazing man).
Speaking of inaccuracies, believe it or not, compared to most biopics, this film actually is mostly correct. The inaccuracies were mostly done for dramatic effect and don't really change the nature of the man or his deeds. Sure, his conversion was a lot less spectacular and he was already married before he went off to war, but the spirit of the film was correct. Leave it to Warner Brothers to get wonderful supporting character actors and a wonderful musical score and great cinematography to work together to make a perfect film for the time. Not surprisingly, the film took home the "Best Actor" Oscar in 1942.
I'd say more but frankly, there are already a ton of reviews on this seminal film. I'd hate to be repetitive, though just had to point out how much I love and respect the film, having just seen it again for the second time.
By the way, get a load of Walter Brennan's eyebrows. I'd LOVE to know what the preacher REALLY looked like!
ruby_fff13 October 2004
Gary Cooper is a very good reason to see Howard Hawk's timeless film "Sergeant York", besides everything else the story represents of an American hero
"Sergeant York" (1941) is based on the true life story of Alvin C. York - a must see. It has every facet of life: struggles and celebrations, pride and humility, anger and reflections, war and peace, atheist and faithful, lazy and zealous, in solitude, in combat, in glory, in contentment of family, satisfying love and rewarding joy. The yin and yang's of living.
Yes, it's the perfect role for Gary Cooper to portray Corporal Alvin C. York. In fact, York himself had the insight to personally make it a condition for the realization of the film with no other but Cooper to play him. The film encompasses the humble beginnings, the struggles York went through from a seemingly good-for-nothing' fellow (but quite a sharpshooter for mischief or turkey hunting) to becoming a decent faith abiding man with his dream for a good piece of land and a house for the girl (Joan Leslie portrays the energetic & affectionate Gracie) he yearned for. The firm yet nurturing love of his mother was exemplary, in spite of the hardship a widowed woman raising 3 children (York being her eldest), Mama York's enduring strength helped York to go on when things didn't turn out as he expected. She patiently prayed and believed that faith would come to her eldest when the time comes. Besides her kindred, she's well-respected by the pastor, shopkeeper, neighbors one and all.
Glad TCM included "Sergeant York" in their film tributes to Gary Cooper. Besides the family aspect, the soldiers in training, army in battle segments are equally represented. In times of war as we are now, even though those of us who do not have immediate affiliation to men and women in battlefields abroad, it's so easy to simply dismiss the life-risking duty of a soldier. We are lucky to be enjoying 'pseudo'-peace within our country's soil vs. enemy grounds. War is never pretty. Deaths & injured are inevitable. Two World Wars past and we're still learning as history continues. When military situation arises, trust in our leaders may require leaps of faith, including their course of action. The decision to go to war as a peace-advocating nation is never easy - to fight for a cause and "to kill in order to save lives" (referenced in "Sergeant York") seem to be unappealing logic and of reasons hard to understand. Nevertheless, faith & trust we'd need as the film's biographical storyline of Alvin York reinforced.
We only hope our freedom of expression doesn't get overly abused or taken for granted: that journalism, documentaries, television broadcasts, political agenda do not indiscriminately expose information that may compromise safety of soldiers in combat or military strategies - that wars will eventually be unnecessary and global harmony will see the light of day.
Insightful filmmaker Errol Morris' "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara" (2003) is a worthwhile & informative documentary film. It's available on DVD.
King Vidor's "Fountainhead" (1949) based on Ayn Rand's novel is another Gary Cooper film with tour de force performance along with a feisty irresistible Patricia Neal. Also in B/W with Max Steiner music. Unconventional, rebellious, conflict and passion, in work and in love, architect and socialite, it's dramatic to say the least. An enduring engaging film.
ciocc100120 January 2003
This movie might not be an entirely accurate depiction of what occurred, but it certainly is an enjoyable and inspiring movie. And I hope it will inspire viewers to look into this slice of history. With the internet, that is easy these days. I found a fascinating bio written by Michael Birdwell on the Alvin C. York Institute website. Did you know that York considered running against freshman Tennessee Senator Albert Gore in 1930? Just think: in a parallel universe, York's son might have run against George Bush!
This is one of those movies that stays with you the rest of your life. Watch it!
Mikey-10920 July 1999
Film-making brilliance . . . an absolute classic of the finest order
Many of the best films have portrayed real-life events -- and Sergeant York is no exception. Gary Cooper as Sergeant York delivers an Oscar-winning performance as a Tennessee hillbilly who, for personal and religious reasons, doesn't want to kill anyone and refuses to join the war on the Western Front in WW I. After much soul searching, he eventually dons a uniform and ships out to France. Using uncanny marksmanship skills acquired from years of living in the back woods, he prevents his platoon's position from being overrun by the enemy by methodically mowing down a few dozen German soldiers. One of Sergeant York's secrets to shooting accuracy is wetting down his sights with a bit of saliva to prevent glare. He emerges from the war as a hero, marries his favorite girl, moves into a house given to him by the State of Tennessee as a symbol of their gratitude, and lives happily ever after. Great stuff, and all true. A stunningly moving film that everyone should see.
letitav29 May 2004
I recommend this film for your family video library!
Definitely a Must See and Must Own!! This movie rates a 10!! A great film for all ages and squeaky clean! My family love this movie, even my girls!! It has a good content and excellent acting. One of the best b&w movies that I have ever seen. It has great action and shows that those who stand behind their belief in God and still get the job done! I also, as a mom, appreciate a movie that I can watch at anytime with my whole family and not worry about too much violence, excessive sex or nudity and foul language. Gary Cooper was an excellent actor during his time and definitely gave Alvin York a worthwhile portrayal. I recommend this movie to all families!! I recommend this film for your family video library!
glentom14 July 2006
Sometimes the story is the movie...
In my book this is one of the best movies of all time. It is the story of Sergeant York, the most decorated soldier of WWI.
Whether the movie presents factual the story or not, is up to historians. But 50 or 100 years from now this movie WILL be the factual history.
Great filming, great acting, great story, all add up to perfection. One of the reviews at this site said something like "an otherwise undistinguished cast." Well, wake up, it has a cast of Walter Brennan, Ward Bond, Noah Beery, Jr. Howard DaSilva, Clem Bevans, Margaret Wycherly, June Lockhart, Dickie Moore, George Tobias, and Joan Leslie. Including probably the greatest character actor of all time, Walter Brennan.
One of the few movies I can watch over and over and over.
jaredc_12317 September 2005
"...a great movie for the entire family."
I reside in Fentress County, the county it talks about in "Sergeant York". Because I live here and also go to the Alvin C. York Agricultural Institue in Jamestown, I have seen this movie many times. Let me tell you it is a great movie for the entire family. It is a movie about Alvin York from Pall Mall, Tennessee. In the movie he turns from his wicked ways and gets saved. Shortly after this he is drafted into the War. There he captures many Germans and plays a vital role in helping America defeat Germany. Some parts may be a little corny... but then, what movie wasn't in the 1940's? If you have not watched this movie I encourage you to do so. It is great!
markcarlson22226 August 2002
A classic and moving war film, even for propaganda
This is one of my all-time favorite films. I've seen it dozens of times and probably many more. The moving and deep drama of the Ozark hillbilly working himself to death to obtain some 'bottom land' is heavy and compelling drama in itself, so much so that one tends to wonder when the war will become an issue. But it does and again, it fills the heart and mind with pathos and suspense. Sergeant York was released during WWII, as an obvious war-bond pusher and patriotism builder, and it is no wonder that is was wildly successful. The war scenes and Cooper's acting are set into a realistic and colorful environment of battle and personal conflict. When York's "You done gimme command" line erupts from the speakers, the viewer is on the edge of his seat, already entranced by the personal heroism of this quiet man. What York did in the war, capturing 132 Germans was real, and the film's portrayal is right on the money, even to the extent, I believe, of filming it on the actual site, but I'm not willing to swear to it. It's the kind of film that makes one proud to be an American and that was its goal. Cooper is entirely believable, although the real Alvin York was hardly as good-looking. It's easy to fall in love with the ever-pretty Joan Leslie, a gem of a woman, as well as the simple and practical Margaret Wycherly as Ma York. Don't you get the idea that she and Pastor Pile have a thing going? Just an irreverent thought.
bpflanzer14 November 2003
I've seen this film many times. I've been anxious for it to come to DVD but... so far-- it's not coming. It's a great sorry about someone who is quite a rabble-rouser until God gets his attention. Then, luck would have it-- he gets drafted. Even before I found Christ- I loved this movie; It's a good wholesome story-- Even great for Kids!!! I read a review today that this is coming to DVD in Feb 2004. I haven't found "proof" but I hope it's true. I don't doubt that I'll buy it as soon as possible. I've even considered VHS version; but my player isn't that good. I don't wanna buy a new player.
dapplez31 August 2013
Watch for the great performances by Margaret Wycherly and Joan Leslie
There are movies that you can barely remember hours after watching them, and there are movies you can't forget even years later. Sergeant York is the later. The movie remains etched in my mind and heart.
It is a story clearly told, yet not oversimplified, with characters boldly drawn, yet not caricatured, at least not the main ones. It would be a great story even if it were not true, but it is true, at least in the main. York's conversion by a lightning bolt striking his rifle is fiction, though his heavy drinking, fighting and ultimate conversion are not. So the lightning is cinematic device to shorten the process, and a brilliant one.
Those who talk about it as a war story (and who complain the first part is boring) miss why this film is so great. It is also a love story and a story of family. Joan Leslie is heartbreakingly sweet and lovely as Gracie Williams. We can feel the chemistry, and see that she is a force for good in Alvin's life, who was 30 when he was drafted.
Leslie's portrayal of Gracie is so full of life and youth and charm. Compare that with Margaret Wycherly's portrayal of Mother York, who is old, tired, dessicated of emotion. Yet she is full of wisdom, of understanding Alvin's passion for Gracie. In her eyes, you can see her thinking back to when she was once Gracie, in her long ago youth. It is a silent, motionless look, plumbing the depths of memory -- a master actress's use of silence.
I think most viewers take Wycherly's performance for granted, perhaps assuming we are seeing the real Wycherly. Yet she was born in London in 1881 to a father who was a doctor -- far from the poverty of Pall Mall, Tennessee -- and had been mainly a British stage and film actress. Nevertheless, those who knew the real Mother York say Wycherly's portrayal was spot on. Now that is real acting.
It is curious that this is the role that earned Gary Cooper his first Oscar. We, the modern viewer, have seen that Aw Shucks persona many times. But apparently it fit the real Alvin York, who insisted on Cooper playing him on screen, and was present for the movie's premiere. You can read about Alvin York online, on Wikipedia and on Gutenberg.org, which has a 1920s biography online. In the quotes of the actual Alvin York, you can easily hear Gary Cooper's voice.
Henry Fonda was considered for the role, and matched York's looks more closely. But he was only a few years younger than Cooper, so it wouldn't have helped much with the Gracie-York match up. I think he could have done the role, but Cooper's fit was right and almost magical. Modesty was the hallmark of York, and Cooper had it down, far more than Fonda. Frankly, I don't notice the age thing when I watch it; it's a movie and you need to be prepared to suspend disbelief up to a point. Besides, people who work hard outside tend to look older, especially if they don't have much to eat.
The scene where the family sits down to dinner and Mother York proudly presents the bag of salt is so beautiful. She reminds me of a stray mother cat who will do anything to protect and feed her children, even to the point of starvation or death, herself. And when I buy salt, I sometimes think about this, and how lucky I am.
As to the portrayal of "hillbillies," we must remember that this was an extremely rural mountain area with no road coming in -- the real Alvin pushed the state to build one after the war -- and it was nearly a century ago. People were different. There was little schooling, too, and the real Alvin later raised funds to build a school. While we see Alvin drinking and fighting, we also see hard working, intelligent, gentle people with nice homes, so I don't see any stereotyping here.
As to the war, yes, the story is true. You can read about it yourself. And it provides a great lesson we should continue to remember today and in the future: The only justification for killing people in war (aside from self defense) is to end the killing and end war.
That is what was in York's mind, and he says so, to stop the killing. York was a pacifist at heart. Killing the enemy out of anger, hatred, retaliation or revenge was not in his mind, and should not be in the mind of any soldier. When this happens, it corrodes the soul of the soldier, so that he can no longer feel like a normal human being.
It was also probably what was on the minds of thousands of Americans who enlisted after seeing this movie, which was released months before America actually entered the war following Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. By then, the war had already been raging for two years, and America's entry was consistent with York's hope of helping to bring the fighting to an end.
York didn't lose his feeling for his fellow man. I found this item from the IMDb trivia section interesting:
"Alvin York himself was on the set for a few days during filming. When one of the crew members tactlessly asked him how many "Jerries" he had killed, York started sobbing so vehemently he threw up. The crew member was nearly fired, but the next day, York demanded that he keep his job."
While the attack he lead killed 28 German soldiers, he also captured 132, saving their lives.
barbb195323 July 2009
Wow. Just...wow.
I started watching this with expectations of seeing a hero right at the start, and a very human, tarnished man appeared. That shouldn't be surprising, since what is just so difficult to grasp is that this movie accurately portrays what happened that day in the Argonne. Wow. You have to ask: how did a real man do all that? This is what the movie as a whole tries to answer, and I think it succeeds pretty well in doing so.
On an external level, it was really fun to watch Gary Cooper, Ward Bond, and Noah Berry, Jr.,partying all over the place; and there was Walter Brennan bringing "old time religion" to the Tennessee hills. I didn't recognize Brennan at first, just his voice. The eyebrows were a bit much, I agree.
The story is an exceptionally deep one, about a man's religious conversion and then testing. I'd like to see another movie today, this time with the real story of his conversion, although the version in this film is powerfully and well done.
The major's comment after York returns from his 10-day furlough really gets at the heart of the matter. The captain is concerned that York's ongoing struggles with conscience will make him a battle risk, but the major understands that York has really proved that he is an ideal fighter -- one who will work away at a challenge until he beats it.
The battle sequences are done with as much authenticity as the sequences in Tennessee were. There really isn't much screen time for the set-up scene in the trenches, but Hawks wastes no chance to convey the hellish battlefield setting, the soul-numbed and battle-shocked human being that stares out at us from the British soldier's eyes, and the nervousness and yet willingness of the new American troops as they wait in the trench for the signal to go "over the top."
This meant a lot to me since I recently found out that the local VFW post is named after a local man who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions in the same general area where York and other Americans were operating, a week or two earlier than York's action on October 8, and who was killed in action three weeks to the day after York's action and less than two weeks before the Armistice. His story moved me quite a bit; I don't know much about WWI and appreciate learning a little more about it.
In this movie, Hawks also shows York's new status as hero and how he deals with it (which is the same as he has handled all his other tests, by thinking it over until he sees the right way to proceed). That was a good thing to include.
There were a couple of weak spots -- the major's telling York on the battlefield that York's desire to save lives was the most remarkable thing of all. Actually, from all I've read, that is what motivates generally all soldiers, including those who eventually are given medals for their actions. I think the major would have known that, and of course, soon all America would re-learn it.
Also, the last part where she surprises York is totally unbelievable, since the field is right out there by the brook and he would have seen all that probably even before he crossed the bridge. Still, even though it's hokey and you pretty much know what is going to happen, it's enjoyable, and it's a good place to end the movie.
gerry-russell-13923 September 1999
Sergeant York: Coop's Greatest role
I love every aspect of this movie, especially Coop's performance. This is (in my opinion) his greatest performance because he was the perfect representative of America's veteran's coming home from a major war and stating clearly that he is not proud of what he did in his service to his country. In the film (as well as the real Sergeant York) he is offered several thousands of dollars (possibly millions) and he refuses it for those reasons stated above. This is my idea of a true hero and what better role model to have than Gary Cooper.
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Government Thinks You are Fat and Stupid
Submitted by Nick Smith on 26 February 2019 - 8:25pm
Governments continue the perpetual war in Oceania, Eastasia, or Eurasia—for us, tobacco, plastics, and soda—in order to keep the people distracted and to justify their own jobs. It seems that every election cycle, another major city floats a soda tax as a do-good measure to improve public health. I saw it almost happen in New York and then actually become law in Philadelphia, and it followed me out to San Francisco in 2016 (Prop V). A good public health crisis is always around the corner, and the soda industry is a great enemy; what is a hero politician without an arch-nemesis?
Despite all this, in a rare pro-freedom move, the state legislature begrudgingly agreed last year to pass a bill banning cities from passing new taxes on sugary beverages, under pressure from soda industry lobbyists. Now, they are preparing to get political revenge for that embarrassment by introducing statewide bills which would do little to benefit public health and much more to advance their own political posture.
Of course, they market these as noble moves to protect innocent and unwitting consumers from the evil soda industry, but what does that really mean?
Ideas that have been floated so far include restricting the size of sugary drinks sold in unsealed containers to 16oz, labeling sugary drinks with a warning about health risks, prohibiting stores from displaying soda drinks near checkout counters, ending promotional deals, and of course a good old fashioned tax on sugary drinks, probably to the tune of $0.02 an ounce.
They claim they just want to help, because the commoners don’t know what’s good for them. It’s not about raising money or virtue signaling to their base, it’s an honest effort to solve the crisis facing our poor communities.
“We’re not saying that people can’t guzzle all the liquid sugar they want through 16-ounce containers. They can do that,” says David Chiu, D-San Francisco.
"And you can legally still buy sodas under any of the bills that were introduced today," Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, said. "We're not taking them off the shelves, we’re saying, 'Informed choice.'"
So you’re still free to be as fat and stupid as you like, you’ll just have to work around the government rules and pay a little extra out of pocket.
What all these proposals boil down to, though, is that you are in fact too stupid to make decisions for yourself, so the government has an obligation to step in to nudge your behavior in the right direction. And we’ll applaud them for taking the initiative!
But is political action inspired by revenge really what the public needs or wants? New taxes and regulations only serve to restrict freedom by limiting your options, even if those options are not necessarily what’s best for you. There are plenty of things that are bad for you, though-- why put the impetus on sugary drinks? Because it’s politically convenient, that’s why.
Perhaps the worst part of these schemes is that they sort of work! No, there hasn’t been any legitimate evidence that the “crisis” is solved, but studies find that people do drink less soda. And why wouldn’t they? It’s simply the law of demand.
For a little thought experiment, if you buy a 12 pack of soda in Berkeley today which the store sells for $5.00, you’ll end up paying an additional 9.25% in sales tax, $0.60 for the CRV and $1.44 for the sugary beverage tax ($0.01 per ounce). That comes out to $7.50 after tax, an effective tax rate of 50%! Tack another $0.02 per ounce on top of that and you’re looking at a whopping 125% tax rate.
What are all these taxes and regulations doing for you other than making your life more difficult and expensive? It’s time to tell the politicians that we can decide what’s best for ourselves. Of course, that would mean that their jobs aren’t quite as important as they would like us to believe.
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Featured Youtuber: Codex Entry
July 25, 2017 Mag Gamer Uncategorized 0
I have watched a lot of videos of people over-analyzing games. Game Theory, Extra Credits, and many other channels are examples of slowly and meticulously picking apart every little detail in a video game, to make up some long drawn out conclusion from left field. Most of these, while they are good and interesting, never really stuck out to me, because a majority of what they tried to convince you on was very thin and a bit of stretch. Codex Entry, however, takes a completely different approach when it comes to this, because instead of trying to overthink some game, stepping way out of the boundaries that were put in place, Codex makes you think you under-analyzed the game, by keeping everything focused, concise, and powerful.
He is very clearly dedicated to what he talks about, with real love and passion that I feel has been slowly deteriorating throughout the “Youtube Gaming Scene”. His Persona videos, for example, give a striking message about how he feels about the game and how it has affected his life, as well as looking at the game deeper, and finding the true meaning behind what the game is at it’s core. I was honestly on the verge of tears watching his Persona videos, because it made me realize where I had gone wrong in my life, not by making up some theory with random facts way outside the realm of the game, but rather shedding light on the real message the developer was trying to portray through his work. He doesn’t limit himself to analysis videos though. He also has a series where he talks about the actual people in the development teams of games, who get sorely overlooked for the hard work and dedication they put into their games. Each of his videos are short, but heavily detailed, like sewing delicate details into a beautiful quilt, threading meticulous research into his powerful commentaries on video games as a whole.
I have managed to speak to him personally, and while it may have been short, I could really see where he is coming from by making these videos. He is a very kind and honest person who just wants to make insightful and uplifting videos to increase his viewers and his own appreciation of video games, while keeping things easy to understand, and emphasizing that little bit of the gaming industry that gets overlooked. He isn’t just some information dispenser though either. He puts a lot of style and personality into his videos to keep them exciting and entertaining.
For those of you who are looking for a change in your life and how you look at video games, look no further than Codex Entry. He once again sparked that phantasmal inspiration for video games I used to have, and showed me that video games can express beauty like any other art-form. The real tragedy behind what he does, is that he only has 2000 subscribers, and not enough people are going to be able to see the magnificent, life-changing works-of-art that he produces on his channel. The person who personifies the message of his videos the most though, is himself. Even though his work isn’t given the praise it deserves, he still keeps striving forward because he does this for himself and the people who do stick around and support him, not the bullshit subscriber and money side of youtube. It just goes to show that subscriber count and how the world perceives you doesn’t truly show your worth and what you are capable of.
Please give his videos a chance, you won’t be disappointed.
Youtuber Spotlight for July 25th 2017 Unsponsored
Channel Page:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCseUB-78sF7MGcbl4mHhEng
https://twitter.com/CodexEntry
Gigantic – New Kid On The Block
Weekly Featured Cosplayers: Hayley and Victor
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Storytelling Mission
Partners In Mission / Nov 1, 2016
“I drew stories before I could write,” Anne Neuberger recalls. “My mother would type my stories for me until I was in eighth grade. Then she told me I had to learn how to type them myself. That’s how I became a writer.”
By Gred Darr
Telling stories is something Anne does very well. It’s her mission.
Anne grew up with her sister and three brothers in Nekoosa, Wis., a small town known for the paper mill where her father, Edward, worked. When not busy raising her family, Anne’s mother, Loretta, could often be found at Sacred Heart Church, where she served as organist. “As a very young girl, I would sit with my mother on the organ bench as long as I didn’t touch the keys or pedals,” Anne says. When she grew older, the Easter Vigil became Anne’s favorite liturgical celebration, she says, recalling “the way the church would be enveloped in darkness until the flame of a single candle spread gradually among other candles and the sanctuary was filled with light.” Church was, for Anne and her family, woven into the fabric of their lives and, later, Anne’s stories.
Anne Neuberger brings mission stories to youngest audiences. (Courtesy of A. Neuberger)
Anne went on to study early childhood development at St. Mary’s University in Winona, Minn., where she met her husband, Paul. After their marriage, Anne and Paul relocated to the Twin Cities, where Paul established his career as a community organizer. Anne taught for several years in various pre-school programs. As their four children arrived, Anne’s childhood passion for writing re-emerged. “I read extensively to my children and found that I too wanted to write, to share stories from my life and faith that would teach and inspire them,” she says.
Anne enrolled in a correspondence course on writing and began writing for church daycare and pre-school programs. Her work soon attracted an audience and, over time, she authored her own books for children and those who work with them. “I’ve always been attracted more to children’s literature than literature for adults,” she says. “Children’s literature is more hopeful, whimsical and filled with new ways of looking at things. People seem to overcome challenges more often in children’s stories.”
It was perhaps inevitable that Anne’s passion for stories of faith and hope would bring her into contact with Maryknoll magazine at a time when the magazine staff was expanding a successful classroom program to younger audiences. Anne was invited to author its stories and activities. “Children have a tremendous ability to absorb much of Catholic social teaching,” she says. “They already possess a deep sense of fairness and kindness that, when nurtured through story, can grow into adult lives of justice and compassion.” For eight years, Anne has inspired grade school children to see themselves in mission through tales of Maryknoll missioners and the people with whom they live and serve abroad.
“I hope,” Anne confides, “that my stories enable children to see that, together with Jesus, we’re all part of one human family and that, to live as family, we need to care for our world and each other.” When hard questions of faith, justice and peace arise, we are grateful to have Partners in Mission like Anne Neuberger who remind us that good answers often arrive as great stories.
Featured Image: Anne Neuberger brings mission stories to youngest audiences.(Courtesy of A. Neuberger)
Greg Darr
Greg Darr is a vocation minister for the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Designing God’s World
POPE FRANCIS: Care for Creation
Today’s Good News, September / October 2016
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Tickets go on sale this Friday at 10am.
The Sound House, Dublin: 21st October, 2019.
Tickets €15 Incl. Booking fee.
Doors 8pm | Over 18's | ID Required
Self Esteem announces headline October show at The Sound House
In the beginning Self Esteem was a joke - or at least a half-joke. A band name coined 10 years ago, by the singer Rebecca Taylor as two fingers to the insecurities and self-doubts that had long mithered her life. But over the past 18 months, Self Esteem has come to mean something more; the humour fading as the name has reflected the shift in Taylor’s own opinion of herself and her place in music.
Self Esteem took shape while Taylor was in a long term relationship with a woman, and it was only when she emerged from that relationship that she felt a new flash of vulnerability. “I had these mad attacks of wanting to be femme,” she says. “I absolutely lost my mind. I was like ‘I need to grow all my hair back! They want hot girl to come on stage!’” It took a moment for her to find her footing again. “I don’t hate men. Not at all, I fancy loads of them” she says. “But I realised: ‘I've spent my life trying to be what you wanted.’”
Discovering what she herself wants has been a gradual process. When she was still in the band her liking for hip hop was roundly dismissed. “It was just such a dirty thing I couldn't even explore,” she says. “But I remember everything changed when I heard My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye. I used to just sit and play along to it on the drums,” she recalls. “And I still like those other things, I still like Bright Eyes, but it’s nothing compared to Destiny's Child Writing’s on the Wall, or all Rihanna songs.”
Several years ago Taylor began writing new rhythms that would become Self Esteem songs and eventually her debut album Compliments Please. “The first few were just banging on a table,” she says. “The rhythms start, and then I can just put a melody with something. It's all a capella. So then I would just harmonise with that. But I didn't play them anyone for ages, years.”
“Only now am I feeling like it's alright to be ambitious or have ideas. It's blowing my mind,” she says. “I was so girly, so submissive. And it's time to just be true. No one's gonna fuck with me now.”
Self Esteem will play The Sound House on Monday October 21st with tickets from €15 incl booking fee on sale Friday May 17th at 10am from Ticketmaster
Strictly over 18’s
Venue: The Soundhouse
Date: Mon 21/10/19
Venue: The Academy
Venue: 3Arena
Date: Fri 22/11/19
Venue: Olympia Theatre
Date: Thu 12/09/19
Mabel announces a headline show in Dublin’s Olympia Theatre
The Olympia Theatre, Dublin: 29th January, 2020. Tickets go on sale Friday 26th July at…
Liam Gallagher: Extra date at 3Arena goes on sale at 9am
Versatile: Tickets for headline 3Arena show go on sale at 9am
3Arena, Dublin: Saturday 30th November, 2019. Tickets go on sale Friday 19th July at 9am.…
https://mcd.ie/artists/self-esteem/
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Skyword: June 2016
Taft Armandroff, Director
Frank and Susan Bash Endowed Chair
Welcome to this June issue of SkyWord. I feel privileged to share with you some of the recent exciting research happening on McDonald Observatory telescopes as well as unique scholarly and outreach accomplishments of esteemed colleagues and alumni.
In research news, this issue is bringing you details of UT Austin astronomer Howie Marion's study of a distant supernova with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, work that is helping scientists better understand the origins of these exploding stars. We also tell how UT Austin Hubble Fellow Andrew Mann has used the Harlan J. Smith Telescope and its IGRINS instrument to discover a planet in the Hyades cluster, the closest open star cluster to Earth.
In outreach news, Assistant Director Anita Cochran and I represented McDonald Observatory in a public forum called “Searching for Earth 2.0” at the 2016 South by Southwest Interactive Festival held in Austin on March 13. The one-hour video is posted on our YouTube site, which is available at the end of the article.
In the Spotlight section, we congratulate Brendan Bowler on winning one of the most prestigious fellowships in astronomy — the highly-competitive Hubble Fellowship from NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). We are thrilled for him to continue his work at McDonald Observatory, which will include using the Smith Telescope with IGRINS and also the Hobby-Eberly Telescope.
The Featured Image is that of UT alumnus Alan Stern giving a talk at the Board of Visitors February dinner with the image of NASA’s New Horizons mission, that he leads, in the background.
First Discovery of a Binary Companion for a Type Ia Supernova
by Rebecca Johnson
AUSTIN — A team of astronomers led by The University of Texas at Austin’s Howie Marion has detected a flash of light from the companion to an exploding star. This is the first time astronomers have witnessed the impact of an exploding star on its neighbor. It provides the best evidence on the type of binary star system that leads to Type Ia supernovae. This study reveals the circumstances for the violent death of some white dwarf stars and provides deeper understanding for their use as tools to trace the history of the expansion of the universe. These types of stellar explosions enabled the discovery of dark energy, the universe’s accelerating expansion that is one of the top problems in science today. The work is published in a recent issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
The subject of how Type Ia supernovae arise has long been a topic of debate among astronomers.
“We think that Type Ia supernovae come from exploding white dwarfs with a binary companion,” Marion said. “The theory goes back 50 years or so, but there hasn’t been any concrete evidence for a companion star before now.”
Astronomers have battled over competing ideas, debating whether the companion was a normal star or another white dwarf.
“This is the first time a normal Type Ia has been associated with a binary companion star,” team member J. Craig Wheeler said. “This is a big deal.” Wheeler is a supernova expert and professor of astronomy at the university.
The binary star progenitor theory for Type Ia supernovae starts with a burnt-out star called a white dwarf. Mass must be added to that white dwarf to trigger its explosion — mass that the dwarf pulls off of a companion star. When the influx of mass reaches the point that the dwarf is hot enough and dense enough to ignite the carbon and oxygen in its interior, a thermonuclear reaction starts that causes the dwarf to explode as a Type Ia supernova.
For a long time, the leading theory was that the companion was an old red giant star that swelled up and lost matter to the dwarf, but recent observations have virtually ruled out that notion. No red giant is seen. The new work presents evidence that the star providing the mass is still burning hydrogen at its center, that is, that this companion star is still in the prime of life.
According to team member Robert P. Kirshner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “If a white dwarf explodes next to an ordinary star, you ought to see a pulse of blue light that results from heating that companion. That’s what theorists predicted and that’s what we saw.
“Supernova 2012cg is the smoking — actually glowing — gun: some Type Ia supernovae come from white dwarfs doing a do-si-do with ordinary stars.”
Located 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, Supernova 2012cg was discovered on May 17, 2012 by the Lick Observatory Supernova Search. Marion’s team began studying it the next day with the telescopes of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
“It’s important to get very early observations,” Marion said, “because the interaction with the companion occurs very soon after the explosion.”
The team continued to observe the supernova’s brightening for several weeks using many different telescopes, including the 1.2-meter telescope at Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory and its KeplerCam instrument, the Swift gamma-ray space telescope, the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory, and about half a dozen others.
“This is a global enterprise,” Wheeler said. Team members hail from about a dozen U.S. universities, as well as institutions in Chile, Hungary, Denmark, and Japan.
What the team found was evidence in the characteristics of the light from the supernova that indicated it could be caused by a binary companion. Specifically, they found an excess of blue light coming from the explosion. This excess matches with the widely accepted models created by U.C. Berkeley astronomer Dan Kasen for what astronomers expect to see when a star explodes in a binary system.
“The supernova is blowing up next to a companion star, and the explosion impacts the companion star,” Wheeler explained. “The side of that companion star that’s hit gets hot and bright. The excess blue light is coming from the side of the companion star that gets heated up.”
Combined with the models, the observations indicate that the binary companion star has a minimum mass of six suns.
“This is an interpretation that is consistent with the data,” said team member Jeffrey Silverman, stressing that it is not concrete proof of the exact size of the companion, like would come from a photograph of the binary star system. Silverman is a postdoctoral researcher at UT Austin.
Only a few other Type Ia supernovae have been observed as early as this one, Marion said, but they have not shown an excess of blue light. More examples are needed.
“We need to study a hundred events like this and then we’ll be able to know what the statistics are,” Wheeler said.
This work is sponsored by National Science Foundation grants AST-1109801, AST-1211196, and AST-1302771.
Science Contacts:
Dr. G.H. (Howie) Marion
Dr. J. Craig Wheeler
Samuel T. and Fern Yanagisawa Regents Professor in Astronomy
Dr. Jeffrey M. Silverman
NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Robert P. Kirshner
Clowes Professor of Science, Harvard University
Newly Discovered Planet in the Hyades Cluster Could Shed Light on Planetary Evolution
AUSTIN — University of Texas at Austin astronomer Andrew Mann and colleagues have discovered a planet in a nearby star cluster which could help astronomers better understand how planets form and evolve. The discovery of planet K2-25b used both the Kepler space telescope and the university’s McDonald Observatory, and is published in a recent issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
The planet orbits a red dwarf star, a star smaller and dimmer than the Sun. Red dwarfs are the most abundant stars in our galaxy. The star is located in the Hyades star cluster, the closest open star cluster to Earth. Its stars are young, so their planets must be young, too.
“Open clusters are powerful tools as all the stars formed with the same age and composition,” Mann said. Once many planets are found orbiting young cluster stars, “we can compare those to planets orbiting older stars elsewhere to see if they are different in some fundamental way — to see how planets change with time.”
For instance, he said, if planets orbiting young stars are farther from their host stars than their older counterparts, it suggests that planets migrate over their lifetimes. They may form farther out and migrate inward. Many exoplanetary systems have large planets orbiting close to their stars, unlike our own solar system. This kind of research could test the theory of planetary migration.
After finding many more examples of planets orbiting young stars, “we can put numbers on this,” Mann said. “This could even give us a glimpse into what our solar system looked like” in the past.
The planet in the Hyades is four times the size of Earth, or about the size of Neptune. Compared to almost all other planets found orbiting red dwarf stars, it’s extremely large. “Almost all of those are less than twice the size of Earth,” Mann said.
The planet’s large size for its parent star suggests that the planet might have a puffy hydrogen and helium atmosphere. Radiation from the star could slowly strip away this atmosphere over time, he said.
“This could have major implications for our understanding of how planets evolve, including Earth-like planets, as we need to know how well a planet can hold an atmosphere given a certain set of conditions to tell how long it remains habitable.”
Amateur astronomers Thomas Jacobs and Daryll LaCourse found this planet candidate in the freely available K2 data from the Kepler space telescope’s extended mission. They contacted Mann, who followed up the tip by observing this red dwarf star with the new IGRINS instrument on the 2.7-meter Harlan J. Smith Telescope at McDonald Observatory.
“Young stars are hard to follow up without something like IGRINS,” Mann said. Because it’s a red dwarf, the star is cool and needed to be studied in infrared light with high spectral resolution. The instrument’s high resolution allows astronomers to rule out the chance that the star has a stellar companion, rather than an orbiting planet. It also helps to confirm that the star is a member of the Hyades cluster, by measuring the star’s velocity and making sure it matches that of the cluster.
Science contact:
Dr. Andrew Mann
amann@astro.as.utexas.edu
Searching for Earth 2.0 at SXSW 2016
From left: Taft Armandroff, Anita Cochran, Cyril Grima, David Hoffman, and Dan Jaffe. Credit: Marsha Miller/UT Austin.
The hunt for Earthlike planets is in full swing! Five UT Austin scientists appeared before an eager audience on March 13 to give their insights on “Searching for Earth 2.0” at the 2016 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival. Held in downtown Austin at the university’s Launch Pad site, the panel discussion gave audience members a chance to ask a plethora of questions relating to finding another Earth, and about finding intelligent life on another planet. Topics ran the gamut from technology, to aliens, to politics.
Organized by Dan Jaffe, astronomy professor and the university’s Vice President for Research, the panel featured Jaffe, McDonald Observatory director Taft Armandroff, assistant director and comet expert Anita Cochran, planetary scientist Cyril Grima of the Jackson School of Geosciences, and professor David Hoffman of the Department of Molecular Biosciences.
The panelists discussed different aspects of the search for Earthlike planets, and talked about their hopes for the future.
Hoffman, an expert on life in Earth’s extreme environments, said he was looking forward to scientists being able to decode the contents of the atmospheres of extrasolar planets, as atmospheres hold clues to what kind of life may be present.
Armandroff, in turn, emphasized technology — both what is needed for the future as well as the recent advances that led to the discoveries of the thousands of exoplanets now confirmed. UT Austin is involved in the future of the hunt for Earth 2.0, both at McDonald Observatory and as a partner in the forthcoming Giant Magellan Telescope, Armandroff said. “And in both places, we’re working to optimize the technology to participate strongly in this exoplanet revolution and to push the frontiers forward.”
Addressing a question about searching for or identifying life that is not carbon-based, Cochran said “What we’ve learned in looking at other planetary systems is that nature is way more clever than we are and has come up with more variety. So, yes, it’s very possible that there’s life out there that runs by a different mechanism,” she said, “but we don’t know what it is. So we can’t study it because our imaginations aren’t good enough — yet.”
Jaffe agreed, adding that “Astronomy is simple and yet we’ve been astounded by the complexity of the other [planetary] systems we find. Biology is complicated. And you can extrapolate from that and figure that things are going to be different and more complicated elsewhere.”
Asked about NASA’s changing decisions regarding funding a mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa, long thought a possible harbor for life, Grima noted that these things depend on politics. “The problem in the U.S. … is that once a mission is started, you have the possibility that year after year, government after government, the [politicians] might not want the mission, so they stop. The current U.S. Congress wants a Europa mission,” he said. “So far it’s going pretty good.”
When asked whether the next generation of large telescopes will be able to analyze the atmospheres of large extrasolar planets, Armandroff said they will. “But … we are moving from the era [of] 20 years ago, [when] the question was ‘Are there planets around other stars? How common are they?’ And astronomers have done a really great job with that. We know that planets are very common and Earth-mass planets are common. And now we’re moving into the realm where this spectroscopy that you asked about will give us much more information about the properties of planets, and greater physical insight into what’s happening on exoplanets.”
Several audience members expressed their enthusiasm for astronomy and their wish to understand more, and even to participate in a meaningful way in astronomical research. “I’m a basic person, and I’m amazed by all this stuff,” one woman said. “How can we become a part of what you’re doing?”
Cochran described the popular online platform Zooniverse that allows any interested person to help with research. “It’s used in the field of galaxies; it’s used in the field of exoplanets,” she explained. Datasets that would be “almost impossible for us to look through as astronomers,” are made available and can be searched by anyone after some online training. She noted that the Kepler exoplanet mission has benefited from public help in making some recent discoveries.
Reaching out to the public is important, Cochran said, “because the public are funding these missions. It’s very important to keep the public involved.” Jaffe added that keeping the public up-to-date on research is not only informational, but inspirational: “When you know that there are other planets around other stars, it changes your picture of your own existence and where you live,” he said. “We try to share with everyone what we know as soon as we know it, to expand people’s horizons, people’s view of our own place in the universe.”
To hear the panelists’ in-depth answers to all of the questions, and to find out what each panelists’ dream discovery would be, you can watch the one-hour video of the panel on our YouTube channel.
Brendan Bowler Wins Hubble Fellowship
AUSTIN — Astronomer Brendan Bowler of The University of Texas at Austin has been awarded a competitive Hubble Fellowship from NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), science center for the Hubble Space Telescope.
“I congratulate Brendan Bowler on winning one of the most prestigious fellowships in astronomy to continue his work at McDonald Observatory," said Taft Armandroff, the observatory’s director.
Hubble Fellows conduct research related to the mission of NASA’s Cosmic Origins Program, which aims to examine the origins of galaxies, stars, and planetary systems, and the evolution of these structures with cosmic time. Bowler studies various aspects of planetary systems.
“I like to boil it down to studying the origin, the atmospheres, and the architectures of giant planets orbiting other stars,” Bowler said. His three-year Hubble fellowship, which he will undertake at UT Austin, will fund his project “Probing the Origins of Giant Planets on Wide Orbits.” He will be looking at massive, Jupiter-sized planets that orbit their stars many times farther away than Jupiter does the Sun.
“How did they form, and how did they arrive there?” he asks. For this work, he will use many different tools, including the 2.7-meter Harlan J. Smith Telescope at McDonald Observatory with its IGRINS instrument, and later, the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald.
"Hubble Fellows are the future leaders of our field, and these prestigious fellowships give them a wonderful opportunity to grow professionally and establish their credentials,” said STScI director Ken Sembach. “This impressive class of Fellows will surely make major contributions to astronomical research for years to come. Congratulations to all of them."
Bowler received his Ph.D. in astronomy from The University of Hawaii, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Caltech. For the past year, he has held a W.J. McDonald Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship with McDonald Observatory.
Dr. Brendan Bowler
Close Encounters with Pluto through Alan Stern
Composite Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI and Anita Cochran
by Marilyn Harris
On February 19, Alan Stern presented the work of NASA’s historic New Horizons mission to the Board of Visitors and other invited guests at the February Board of Visitors meeting dinner held at the Hyatt Regency in Austin.
Stern, who leads the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, holds four degrees from UT Austin — including his B.S. in physics, B.A. in astronomy, and M.S. degrees in both aerospace and civil engineering.
New Horizons, the fastest spacecraft ever launched, left Earth in January of 2006, and changed the way scientists and the world see Pluto forever with amazing images that began arriving back to Earth in July of 2015. The flyby of another dwarf planet known as 2014 MU69 is planned for January 1, 2019.
Stern appears on Time magazine’s 2016 list of the 100 most influential people in the world. We were honored to witness the inside story of the New Horizons mission as well as more technical details of the exploration of Pluto during the Special Colloquium held earlier the same day.
SkyWord is an e-newsletter featuring McDonald Observatory research, instrumentation, and education and outreach. For more information or to communicate story ideas or featured images for the next issue of SkyWord, please e-mail skywordeditor@mcdonaldobservatory.org.
Editor: Marilyn Harris
Contributors: Taft Armandroff, Rebecca Johnson, Marilyn Harris, Sandra Preston, Doug Addison, Carolyn Porter
Designer: Maria Huang
Photography: Director’s Message Image, Ethan Tweedie Photography; Spotlight, Brendan Bowler
SkyWord Sign-up
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Tag: january
JOHN 5 and The Creatures to Release “It’s Alive!” Live Album in January
Physical Pre-Orders Coming Soon | Available Digitally via www.john-5.com
“It’s Alive!” U.S. Tour to Begin February 1 in Orlando, FL | VIP Packages Available
JOHN 5 and The Creatures (bassist Ian Ross and drummer Logan Miles Nix) are set to release a brand new live album, It’s Alive!, in January. Becoming available on Thursday, January 25, 2018, It’s Alive! is the first album released by the world-renowned guitarist to be featured on vinyl. A stunning 24-page, full color tour book covering the JOHN 5 and The Creatures tour journeys so far will also be available for separate purchase.
Pre-orders are available now at www.john-5.com/store, with more options coming soon. Fans can check back to www.john-5.com for updates.
JOHN 5 says about the recording of It’s Alive!, “I remember pulling up to a beautiful venue that we played in Sellersville, Pennsylvania and before we were unloading the equipment, the soundman said, ‘Hey guys, would you like to record the show?’ We said, ‘sure that would be amazing!’ I always wanted to have a really great recording of the show. We were a few weeks into the show so we were really well rehearsed, so I said, ‘Alright guys, let’s not jump around. Let’s just really try to get a great performance because we only have one shot – no other shows if we mess up!’ So, we explained to the crowd that we would be recording. You can hear that on the recording of the album, which makes it very magical. It came out amazingly! That’s the magic of live albums to me – capturing the performance.”
It’s Alive! track listing:
1. Guitars, Tits and Monsters
2. Flight of The Vulcan Kelly
3. Six Hundred and Sixty Six Pickers In Hell, CA
4. Here’s to the Crazy Ones
5. This is my Rifle
6. Jiffy Jam
7. Hall Haw
8. Season Of The Witch
9. The Nightmare Unravels
10. Portrait of Sydney Sloan
11. Triple D
12. Black Grass Plague
13. Behind The Nut Love
14. Making Monsters
15. Beat It
16. Now Fear This
17. Medley
JOHN 5 adds, “I’m so proud of it that I wanted to put it out and also tour it like bands used to tour live albums back in the 70s. I thought that was so cool! I’ve put out a lot of records, so I thought – goddammit, I’m going to do it!”
JOHN 5 and The Creatures will begin an extensive tour of the United States in February for a first leg, and will pick back up in late March for a second. The tour will start in Orlando, FL on February 1 and come to an end in Tacoma, WA on April 21. Tickets will become available very soon, and VIP packages will be available exclusively at www.john-5.com/store. See below for a full listing of dates.
JOHN 5 and The Creatures It’s Alive! tour dates:
2/1 – Orlando, FL @ The Social
2/2 – Jacksonville, FL @ 1904 Music Hall
2/3 – Atlanta, GA @ Drunken Unicorn
2/5 – Asheville, NC @ Orange Peel
2/6 – Greensboro, NC @ Blind Tiger
2/7 – Virginia Beach, VA @ Shaka’s
2/8 – Richmond, VA @ Broadberry
2/9 – College Park, MD @ Milkboy
2/10 – Sellersville, PA @ Sellersville Theater
2/11 – Stanhope, NJ @ Stanhope Theater
2/12 – New York, NY @ Highline Ballroom
2/13 – Boston, MA @ Middle East
2/14 – Syracuse, NY @ Lost Horizon
2/15 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Hard Rock
2/16 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland
2/17 – Westland, MI @ Token Lounge
2/18 – Chicago, IL @ Reggies
2/20 – Des Moines, IA @ Vaudeville Mews
2/21 – Indianapolis, IN @ Vogue
2/22 – Newport, KY @ Southgate House
2/23 – Lexington, KY @ Manchester Music Hall
2/24 – Chattanooga, TN @ Songbirds
3/29 – San Antonio, TX @ Rock Box
3/30 – Dallas, TX @ Trees
3/31 – Houston, TX @ Scout Bar
4/2 – Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad
4/3 – Tucson, AZ @ 191 Toole
4/4 – Mesa, AZ @ Club Red
4/5 – San Diego, CA @ Brick by Brick
4/6 – Los Angeles, CA @ Whisky A Go Go
4/7 – Las Vegas, NV @ Vamp’d
4/8 – Fullerton, CA @ SlideBar
4/11 – Ventura, CA @ Discovery
4/12 – San Jose, CA @ Ritz
4/13 – San Francisco, CA @ DNA Lounge
4/14 – Fresno, CA @ Full Circle Brewery
4/15 – Sacramento, CA @ Harlows
4/17 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex
4/18 – Boise, ID @ Neurolux
4/19 – Bend, OR @ Volacanic Pub
4/20 – Portland, OR @ Hard Rock PDX
4/21 – Tacoma, WA @ Tacoma Dome – Tacoma Guitar Festival
Filed Under: Music, Music Headlines Tagged With: 5, album, alive, creatures, january, john, ...
Black Veil Brides Release New Song “When They Call My Name”, New Album Out January 12, 2018
BLACK VEIL BRIDES RELEASE NEW SONG “WHEN THEY CALL MY NAME”
NEW ALBUM VALE OUT JANUARY 12, 2018, PRE-ORDER AVAILABLE TODAY
NORTH AMERICAN CO-HEADLINE TOUR DATES WITH ASKING ALEXANDRIA KICKS OFF IN JANUARY
NEW YORK, NY (November 3, 2017) — Today, BLACK VEIL BRIDES release new song “When They Call My Name” off their highly anticipated fifth full length album, VALE [LAVA/Republic Records].
Listen to “When They Call My Name” Here!
After quietly fueling fan anticipation over the past month, BLACK VEIL BRIDES share the details for their anxiously awaited fifth full-length album, VALE [LAVA/Republic Records]—available, January 12, 2018. Pre-Order VALE Here!
The official pre-order grants fans immediate downloads of the first three songs to be released off VALE, “My Vow,” “The Outsider,” and now “When They Call My Name.” Listen to “My Vow” Here and “The Outsider” Here!
Produced by longtime collaborator John Feldmann [blink-182, Panic! At the Disco], VALE sees BLACK VEIL BRIDES sharpen their signature sound to knife point precision.
The band hits the road on January 10th, 2018 for their North American co-headline tour with Asking Alexandria in Salt Lake City and will hit major markets across the country including New York’s Terminal 5 on February 8th and more! Tickets & VIP Packages are on-sale now. Check out the full itinerary below and purchase tickets here!
To keep in touch with the band, join the new BVB ARMY and be the first to get news by Text Message! Sign up at www.BVBARMY.com OR Text BVBV to 856-282-2769
BLACK VEIL BRIDES have shocked and electrified modern rock back to life. Their critically acclaimed self-titled fourth album, Black Veil Brides, bowed in the Top of the Billboard Top 200 and received “Album of the Year” at the 2015 Alternative Press Music Awards. It followed up 2013’s Wretched and Divine, which crashed the Top 200 at #7 and yielded the signature smash “In The End” proclaimed “Song of the Year” at the Revolver Golden God Awards. Playing to millions of rabid fans worldwide, they’ve ignited festivals such as Download and Rock on the Range and been tapped for high-profile tours with Avenged Sevenfold, Slash, Mötley Crüe, Hollywood Undead, and more.
1/10 Salt Lake City, UT The Complex
1/11 Denver, CO Fillmore Auditorium
1/12 Kansas City, MO Arvest Bank Theatre at the Midland
1/13 St. Paul, MN Myth Live
1/15 St. Louis, MO The Pageant
1/17 Pittsburgh, PA Stage AE – Indoor
1/18 Grand Rapids, MI 20 Monroe Live
1/19 Milwaukee, WI Eagles Club Stage
1/20 Chicago, IL Riviera Theatre
2/2 Worcester, MA Palladium
2/3 Portland, ME State Theatre
2/4 Montreal, QC M Telus
2/5 Toronto, ON Rebel
2/7 Norfolk, VA The NorVa
2/8 New York, NY Terminal 5
2/9 Baltimore, MD Rams Head Live
2/10 Philadelphia, PA Electric Factory
2/12 Atlanta, GA Tabernacle
2/13 Nashville, TN Marathon Music Works
2/14 Indianapolis, IN Egyptian Room at Old National Centre
2/16 Dallas, TX Gas Monkey Live
2/17 Houston, TX House of Blues
2/19 Albuquerque, NM El Rey Theater
2/20 Tempe, AZ The Marquee
2/22 Boise, ID Knitting Factory Concert House
2/23 Portland, OR Roseland Theater
2/24 Seattle, WA Showbox SoDo
2/25 Vancouver, BC Vogue Theatre
2/27 Spokane, WA Knitting Factory Concert House
3/1 San Francisco, CA The Warfield Theatre
3/2 Las Vegas, NV House of Blues
Filed Under: Music, Music Headlines Tagged With: 12, 2018, album, black, brides, call, ...
Chart-Topping Rap Duo TWIZTID to Drop New Full-Length Album “The Continuous Evilution Of Life’s ?’s” on January 27, 2017
A TWIZTID First: Supporters Exclusively Surprised with New Album Details via The Green Book Re-Issue Booklet, Out Last Friday
PLUS: The Green Book Vinyl Includes Download Card for New Single “Are You Insane Like Me?”
The Continuous Evilution Of Life’s ?’s Pre-Orders Begin Black Friday 2016 via www.TwiztidShop.com
Supporters of 11-time Billboard chart-topping rap duo TWIZTID were treated to a special surprise when opening the booklets of their pre-ordered The Green Book re-issues that were delivered on last Friday’s release date of August 19th – the title and release date of TWIZTID’s upcoming 12th release, entitled The Continuous Evilution Of Life’s ?’s was revealed! The new full-length album will be the duo’s second released via their own Majik Ninja Entertainment label and pre-orders will go live on Black Friday – November 25, 2016 via www.TwiztidShop.com. The Continuous Evilution Of Life’s ?’s will hit stores on January 27, 2017.
TWIZTID recently announced their massive 2016 fall tour, the “Spooktacular Horror Show”, beginning on September 28 in Minneapolis, MN and visiting 30+ cities before coming to a close on Halloween night in Sauget, IL. The “Spooktacular Horror Show” tour will feature special guests Mac Lethal, Zodiac Mprint (Blaze and The R.O.C.), Lex The Hex Master, Menage 2 Sobriety and Godz Of Kaos. See below for currently confirmed “Spooktacular Horror Show” dates.
Tickets and VIP Packages are on sale via www.Twiztid-Shop.com. VIP Packages include a pre-show Meet and Greet with TWIZTID, Zodiac Mprint and Lex The Hex Master. They also include a VIP pass, 24×36 poster, hat pin, Majik Ninja Entertainment sampler, Get Twiztid CD, Mutant Remixed And Remastered CD, TWIZTID live DVD and three black and white 8×10 promotional photos that VIP’s can get signed by TWIZTID at the VIP Meet and Greet.
TWIZTID on the “Spooktacular Horror Show” 2016 Fall Tour
9/28 – Minneapolis, MN @ Cabooze
9/29 – Kansas City, MO @ Riot Room
9/30 & 10/1 – Denver, CO @ The Roxy Theatre
10/2 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex
10/4 – Sacramento, CA @ The Boardwalk
10/6 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Union Nightclub
10/7 – Las Vegas, NV @ LVCS
10/8 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Marquee Theatre
10/9 – Albuquerque, NM @ Sunshine Theater
10/10 – Oklahoma City, OK @ Farmers Market Event Center
10/11 – Houston, TX @ Scout Bar
10/12 – New Orleans, LA @ Southport Hall
10/13 – Marietta, GA @ The 120 Tavern and Music Hall
10/14 – Richmond, VA @ The Broadberry
10/15 – Boonsboro, MD @ Boonsboro Event Center
10/16 – Worcester, MA @ Worcester Palladium
10/17 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Trocadero
10/18 – Clifton Park, NY @ Upstate Music Hall
10/20 – Buffalo, NY @ Vpub at The Villager
10/21 – Morgantown, WV @ Mainstage Morgantown
10/22 – Cleveland, OH @ The Agora Theatre
10/23 – Newport, KY @ Madison Theater
10/24 – Clarksville, TN @ The Warehouse
10/25 – Knoxville, TN @ The Concourse at the International
10/26 – Columbus, OH @ The Alrosa Villa
10/27 – Louisville, KY @ Diamond Pub and Billiards
10/28 – Kokomo, IN @ Front Row Live
10/29 – Chicago, IL @ Portage Theater
10/30 – Detroit, MI @ The Majestic Theatre
10/31 – Sauget, IL @ Pop’s
In addition to the new album details, supporters who bought the The Green Book re-issue vinyl edition were treated to a digital download card featuring the first single off of The Continuous Evilution Of Life’s ?’s, entitled “Are You Insane Like Me?” The track will be available for streaming soon.
The Continuous Evilution Of Life’s ?’s will feature 12 all new tracks, primarily produced by longtime TWIZTID producer Seven. However, the new album features four tracks with a clear hard rock influence – a crossover genre TWIZTID has successfully dabbled in for over a decade. The four aforementioned tracks were produced by famed goth rock frontman Davey Suicide and his keyboardist Needlz. An official tracklisting will be revealed soon.
TWIZTID states, “We’re blessed to still be putting out records… I like to think that’s because we put out good music that continues to entertain and amaze. This new record is another level of our continuous evolution. We are the question marks!”
The Continuous Evilution Of Life’s ?’sproducer Davey Suicide adds, “Needlz and I have been writing songs together for five years now. So when TWIZTID mentioned they wanted to have a rock industrial aesthetic in this album, we were pumped to contribute our musical influences to this.”
“The Hunger Games: The Exhibition” Opens in NY at Discovery Times Square
Hamilton, 2017 Tony®-winning Best Musical, Leads the 18/19 Fairwinds Broadway in Orlando Season at Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts
Filed Under: Headlines, Music, Music Headlines Tagged With: 2017, 27, album, charttopping, continuous, drop, ...
“Gasper Noe’s LOVE” Available on Blu-ray and DVD on January 5, 2016
AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY™ AND DVD ON JANUARY 5, 2016
Los Angeles, CA (November 24, 2015) — Alchemy is proud to announce the home entertainment release of the intense drama, LOVE starring Aomi Muyock, Karl Gussman (Ratter), Klara Kristin. Written and directed by first time feature filmmaker, Gasper Noe, LOVE premiered at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival and was an official selection at the Festival De Cannes 2015. LOVE has a running time of 130 minutes, is not rated and will be available on Blu-ray™ and DVD on January 5, 2016.
LOVE is a sexual melodrama about a boy and a girl and another girl. It’s a love story, which celebrates sex in a joyous way.
ABOUT ALCHEMY
Alchemy is the largest independent distributor of film and television content across all platforms and windows in North America. Alchemy develops tailored distribution strategies, from theatrical release to DVD, digital, VOD, and television. Under CEO Bill Lee’s direction, the company has distributed the work of some of the world’s finest filmmakers including Richard Linklater, Werner Herzog, Gregg Araki, Dito Montiel, John Hillcoat, John Turturro, Lee Daniels, Oren Moverman and James Cameron. The company’s current releases include Ravi and Geeta Patel’s MEET THE PATELS, and Gaspar Noe’s LOVE, with past successes including WELCOME TO ME, FADING GIGOLO, WHAT MAISIE KNEW, RAMPART, and BERNIE. Upcoming releases include Nanni Moretti’s MIA MADRE, Rob Zombie’s 31, Yorgos Lanthimos’s THE LOBSTER, and Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s French horror film EVOLUTION.
Alchemy boasts the independent content industry’s preeminent end-to-end supply chain solution for physical and digital distribution. The company is the industry’s largest physical distributor outside of the major studios and Lionsgate, representing the majority of non-studio content at Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Sam’s Club and is the leading independent supplier to digital platforms including iTunes, Netflix and VOD.
Alchemy owns a catalog of more than 1,000 film titles and has deals for the ongoing distribution of film titles and programming for clients including DreamWorks Animation, Magnolia, Microsoft, MPI Media, Music Box Films, nCircle, Phase 4 Films, PBS Distribution, Team Marketing, Well Go USA and Vertical, among many others.
Filed Under: Film Headlines Tagged With: 2016, 5, bluray, dvd, gasper, january, ...
New Five-Part ESPN Series “Snoop & Son: A Dad’s Dream” Set for January 14
ESPN will televise a five-part documentary style series Snoop & Son: A Dad’s Dream beginning Wednesday, Jan. 14, with an unprecedented look at entertainment icon Snoop Dogg’s journey with his football star son Cordell Broadus. The series will air four consecutive Wednesday nights at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN (re-airs on ESPNU) with a fifth and final episode airing in mid-February.
Cordell, 17, is a standout student and prep player, and one of the most sought after recruits in the nation with top schools from Notre Dame to USC vying for him to play for them. Snoop is a constant presence in his football life. He’s a regular attendee at practice and is in constant contact with Cordell’s head coach. When Snoop is on the road and can’t attend a game, he has the game streamed to him, no matter where he is in the world. Over 10 years ago, Snoop started the Snoop Youth Football League (SYFL) because of his passion for coaching kids. The League has provided thousands of young boys and girls a positive environment to learn skills for life – championing kids to be better citizens on and off the field. Cordell began his football career under his father’s guidance as a player in the SFYL.
With exclusive behind-the-scenes access to Snoop and Cordell as he prepares for the next level, the half-hour show will take viewers into the Broadus home for family dinners, on Snoop’s tour bus as he breaks down game film and on the sidelines for each game of Cordell’s senior season.
Rory Karpf, executive producer, said, “People will see a very different side of Snoop. They’ll see a man navigating the line between father and friend. They’ll see someone whose interest in his son’s life reflects what he himself never had. Above all, they’ll see a father extraordinarily proud of his son.”
“I’ve been known for my work in many industries, but what I am most proud of is my beautiful family. My son is an extremely talented athlete and my wife and I will be by his side wherever he chooses to play. I’m looking forward to the world watching me go through this journey with my family,” said Snoop.
About Snoop Dogg
An entertainment icon and with more than 20 years in the business, Snoop continues to pave the way in the hip-hop industry, serving as a mentor to many new and established artists. Being the trendsetter he is, Snoop stands at the forefront of popular culture with award-winning and multi-platinum albums and songs, critically acclaimed films and television shows, lifestyle products, philanthropic efforts and digital ventures, including his YouTube original series “GGN News.” Snoop defines hip-hop history and is set to spark the fire in the beginning of 2015 with his new album, ‘BUSH’, produced entirely by Pharrell Williams.
Sportsman Channel and Penn Jillette Set to Conjure Series Launch of “Camp Stew” on Thursday, July 17
Melissa Joan Hart talks Season Two of ABC Family’s “Melissa & Joey”
Disney Junior Orders Third Season of Hit Series “Jake and the Never Land Pirates”
SyFy Renews Hit Series “Being Human” for Third Season
“Dancing With The Stars” Announced Cast For New Season
Filed Under: TV Headlines Tagged With: 14, dads, dream, espn, fivepart, january, ...
“My Little Pony: The Movie” Coming to DVD January 27, 2015
FEATURING THE VOICES OF Danny DeVito, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Rhea Perlman, Tony Randall and more
Los Angeles, CA – Travel back in time to the 1980s, MY LITTLE PONY-style! My Little Pony: The Movie is coming to DVD on January 27, 2015 in the U.S. and Canada from Shout! Kids in collaboration with Hasbro Studios. The animated film has been newly restored, making Ponyland look brighter than ever!
The first day of Spring is on its way and the Little Ponies are preparing for it with a big festival. But all the fun may come to an end if the witch Hydia has her way! Can the Ponies defeat Hydia and her evil daughters, Reeka and Draggle? More importantly, can they save Ponyland from the witches’ concoction, the strange purple goo called Smooze, that’s threatening to bury the whole town?
With an all-star voice cast, including Danny DeVito, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Rhea Perlman, Tony Randall and more, My Little Pony: The Movie is a rollicking adventure you’ll want to see again and again!
Filed Under: Film Headlines Tagged With: 2015, 27, coming, dvd, january, movie, ...
“Boyhood” The Most Critically-acclaimed Film of the Year Debuts on Blu-ray Combo Pack January 6, 2015
DIRECTOR RICHARD LINKLATER’S 12-YEAR CINEMATIC MASTERPIECE COMES HOME
The Most Critically-acclaimed Film of the Year Debuts on Blu-ray™ Combo Pack
Buy it Four Weeks Early on Digital HD December 9, 2014
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. – Hailed as “a moving 12-year epic that isn’t quite like anything else in the history of cinema” (Andrew O’Hehir, Salon), “a breathtaking achievement” (Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post) and “a profound viewing experience” (Manohla Dargis, The New York Times), writer/director Richard Linklater’s extraordinary film BOYHOOD debuts on Blu-ray Combo Pack and DVD January6, 2015 from Paramount Home Media Distribution. The film arrives four weeks early on Digital HD December 9, 2014.
Filmed over the course of 12 years with the same cast, BOYHOOD is a groundbreaking story of growing up as seen through the eyes of a child named Mason. A box office hit from IFC Films that has garnered universal critical acclaim, BOYHOOD achieved a rare 99% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, earned an unprecedented score of 100 on Metacritic and is the first film to receive an A+ score from Entertainment Weekly’s Critical Mass. The film stars Academy Award® nominee* Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Lorelei Linklater and Ellar Coltrane as Mason.
The BOYHOOD Blu-ray Combo Pack includes a look at the extraordinary work that went into making the film, as well as an in-depth Q&A with Richard Linklater and the cast.
The Blu-ray Combo Pack available for purchase includes a Digital Version of the film that can be accessed through UltraViolet™, a way to collect, access and enjoy movies. With UltraViolet, consumers can add movies to their digital collection in the cloud, and then stream or download them—reliably and securely—to a variety of devices.
The BOYHOOD Blu-ray is presented in 1080p high definition with English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital and English Audio Description with English, English SDH and Spanish subtitles. The combo pack includes access to a Digital HD copy of the film as well as the following:
Feature film in high definition
The 12 Year Project
Q&A with Richard Linklater and the Cast
Feature film in standard definition
The BOYHOOD DVD is presented in widescreen enhanced for 16:9 televisions with English 5.1 Dolby Digital, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital and English Audio Description and English and Spanish subtitles. The DVD includes the feature film in standard definition.
Filed Under: DVD/Blu-Ray Reviews Tagged With: 2015, 6, bluray, boyhood, combo, criticallyacclaimed, ...
Universal Orlando Resort And Warner Bros. To Host Second Annual “A Celebration Of Harry Potter” Event In January 2015
“A Celebration of Harry Potter” will Feature Incredible Experiences at Both Universal’s Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios Florida Jan. 30 – Feb. 1
Vacation Packages with Exclusive Benefits, Including Exclusive Q&A Sessions with Harry Potter Film Talent, Go on Sale Thursday, August 21 at Noon EST
ORLANDO, Fla., Aug. 14, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Universal Orlando Resort and Warner Bros. announced today that they will host the second annual “A Celebration of Harry Potter” event – a special event for fans celebrating the global phenomenon that is Harry Potter.
Beginning January 30, 2015, fans will enjoy three days of incredible experiences – including the “A Celebration of Harry Potter” Expo, Q&A sessions with Harry Potter film talent and more. Special vacation packages, including annual passholder packages, will go on sale August 21 and will include exclusive benefits such as access to an exclusive evening event in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Hogsmeade and the all-new The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Diagon Alley. Full vacation package details are below.
All general admission park guests will have the opportunity to:
Attend Q&A sessions with Harry Potter film talent and other special guests (talent attendees will be announced at a later date)
Experience and participate in the interactive and unique exhibits of the “A Celebration of Harry Potter” Expo
Enjoy special discussions regarding various aspects of the Harry Potter franchise
Visit The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Hogsmeade at Universal’s Islands of Adventure and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Diagon Alley at Universal Studios Florida. Plus, ride the Hogwarts Express between the two lands with a park-to-park ticket.
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Diagon Alley officially opened in Universal Studios Florida on July 8, 2014 bringing even more of Harry Potter’s adventures to life at Universal Orlando Resort. The new land features incredible shops with windows full of magical surprises, authentic dining experiences, a fire-breathing dragon and the new multi-dimensional thrill ride, Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts. Guests with a park-to-park ticket will also be able to board the iconic Hogwarts Express and enjoy a unique journey as they travel between London and Hogsmeade. The new immersive area expands upon The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Hogsmeade, launched in 2010 in Universal’s Islands of Adventure, and doubles the size of the sweeping area already dedicated to Harry Potter’s adventures to create a spectacularly themed environment across both Universal theme parks.
While most of the activities for “A Celebration of Harry Potter” will be open to all Universal Orlando park guests and annual passholders, only guests who purchase the exclusive event vacation package or annual passholder package will enjoy certain special benefits and reserved seating for select events. Packages are limited and will go on sale at noon EST on Thursday, August 21, 2014. See below for full package details.
Packages for “A Celebration of Harry Potter” at Universal Orlando Resort
On Sale at Noon EST on August 21, 2014
On-Site Hotel Celebration Vacation Package ~ Starts at $219 per adult per night, tax inclusive
3-night on-site hotel accommodations at Universal’s Cabana Bay Beach Resort, Universal Orlando Resort’s all-new retro-themed moderate & value priced hotel
3-day park-to-park ticket to both Universal Studios Florida and Universal’s Islands of Adventure (includes access to the Hogwarts Express)
Exclusive Q&A session with select Harry Potter film talent
Access to an exclusive evening event in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Diagon Alley and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Hogsmeade, including light desserts and Butterbeer
Specially themed Welcome Parcel and complimentary commemorative merchandise item
Special Guest access to the “A Celebration of Harry Potter” Expo
Reserved seating or viewing area for select Celebration events
Early Park Admission to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter one hour before the parks open
Breakfast at the Three Broomsticks in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Hogsmeade, one per person
Complimentary on-site transportation to and from both theme parks and Universal CityWalk
Note: This package does not include complimentary Universal Express Unlimited ride access
On-Site Deluxe Hotel Celebration Vacation Package ~ Starts at $285 per adult per night, tax inclusive
3-night on-site hotel accommodations at one of Universal Orlando’s spectacular deluxe on-site hotels: Loews Portofino Bay Hotel, Hard Rock Hotel or Loews Royal Pacific Resort
Complimentary Universal Express Unlimited ride access to skip the regular lines in both theme parks for all three days – a FREE benefit worth up to $89 per person, per day
Universal Partner Hotel Celebration Vacation Package ~ Starts at $185 per adult per night, tax inclusive
3-night accommodations at a Universal Partner Hotel near Universal Orlando
Free scheduled transportation between the hotel and Universal Orlando Resort
To book special annual passholder event vacation packages, please call 1-888-343-8991 starting August 21, 2014 at noon EST.
Access to select events within “A Celebration of Harry Potter” is included in regular admission to Universal Orlando or with an annual pass. For more information about the event, tickets and vacation packages, visit www.universalorlando.com/celebration.
About the Harry Potter Series
Harry Potter continues to be a global phenomenon. Each of the seven books by author J.K. Rowling has broken sales records, with the series to date having sold over 450 million copies worldwide and translated into 77 languages. The Harry Potter films, produced by Warner Bros. Pictures, have grossed more than $7.7 billion to date worldwide at the box office, making Harry Potter the largest-grossing film franchise in history.
About Universal Orlando Resort
Vacation like you mean it at Universal Orlando Resort – where every heart pounding, jaw-dropping, goose-bumping second counts. It is the only place where you can turn spending time with your family into spending time as a family. Together, you can soar above Hogwarts with Harry Potter, swing above the streets with Spider-Man, become a Minion in the hilarious and heartwarming Despicable Me Minion Mayhem ride, and join Optimus Prime in the fight to save mankind on the new mega-attraction, TRANSFORMERS: The Ride – 3D. And now, you can step into The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Diagon Alley.
Universal Orlando Resort is home to two incredible theme parks: Universal Studios Florida and Universal’s Islands of Adventure; four magnificently themed on-site hotels: Loews Portofino Bay Hotel, Hard Rock Hotel, Loews Royal Pacific Resort and the newest addition, Universal’s Cabana Bay Beach Resort; and Universal CityWalk – a unique dining and entertainment complex featuring one-of-a-kind restaurants, shops and nightclubs. And located just minutes from Universal Orlando Resort is Wet n’ Wild, Orlando’s premier waterpark.
Universal Orlando Resort is part of NBCUniversal, a Comcast company. Follow Universal Orlando Resort on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
About Warner Bros. Entertainment
Warner Bros. Entertainment is a global leader in all forms of entertainment and their related businesses across all current and emerging media and platforms. A Time Warner Company, the fully integrated, broad-based studio is home to one of the most successful collections of brands in the world and stands at the forefront of every aspect of the entertainment industry from feature film, television and home entertainment production and worldwide distribution to DVD, digital distribution, animation, comic books, video games, product and brand licensing, international cinemas and broadcasting.
HARRY POTTER, characters, names and related indicia are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Harry Potter Publishing Rights © JKR.
Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: 2015, annual, bros, celebration, event, harry, ...
Monster Jam Returns to Orlando on January 25th, 2014!
MONSTER JAM® RETURNS TO ORLANDO ON JANUARY 25TH, 2014
Annual motor sports spectacle is final event before Florida Citrus Bowl demolition
What: MONSTER JAM® makes its return to the Orlando area when the annual motor sports spectacle drives into the Florida Citrus Bowl Stadium. The Monster Jam is one of Orlando’s most popular and largest single-day stadium events, attracting capacity crowds of over 60,000 fans. A huge field of sixteen monster trucks will compete in side-by-racing and the fan-favorite freestyle competition. One of the many highlights of this year’s event is the return of fan favorite Dennis Anderson (originator and driver of GRAVE DIGGER) to the city and stadium he calls his favorite.
Show Time: One show only: Saturday, January 25th 0 Gates Open at 5 pm. Opening Ceremonies at 6:30 pm. Racing Starts at 7 pm.
Where: Florida Citrus Bowl Stadium, 1610 W. Church Street, Orlando, FL 32805
Ticket Prices & Purchase: Advance purchase SuperValue Tickets are ONLY $15. $35 VIP / $25 Sideline. Tickets are on sale now at all Ticketmaster outlets, the Amway Center Box Office, or charge by phone at 800-745-3000 or ticketmaster.com. Tickets will also be available day of show at the Citrus Bowl. All seats reserved. Subject to facility fee, plus convenience and handling charges. Don’t wait – buy tickets in advance as prices go up $5 more the week of show. Get more show information at www.MonsterJam.com (click on “Tickets” and search for Orlando January 25th).
Show Details: Central Florida will heat up this January when 1,500 horsepower, 10,000-pound monster trucks compete in side-by-side racing and the fan-favorite freestyle
competition where each monster truck gets up to 120 seconds to “wow” the crowd with huge jumps, wheelies, truck-spinning donuts, flips, and the destruction of cars, vans, buses, motor homes and more. Four-time World Champion, Dennis Anderson, returns to his favorite city driving the legendary monster truck he created 32 years ago, GRAVE DIGGER. After his sensational 2013 debut, Ryan Anderson will be joining his father driving SON UVA DIGGER.
The event will also feature 11-time and reigning World Champion MAXIMUM DESTRUCTION, plus Latino favorite EL TORO LOCO, MOWAWK WARRIOR, ICE CREAM MAN, MONSTER MUTT ROTTWEILER, the Orlando debut of Nicole Johnson driving SCOOBY, and more yet-to-be announced motorsports competitors. The official title of the event is Metro PCS, 1-800-Ask-Gary, Budweiser & Your Southern Ford Dealers present MONSTER JAM®.
Preview/Opps/Contests: Fans can go behind the scenes, meet the drivers for autographs and photo ops, and see the monster trucks up close at the World’s Ultimate Pit Party at Tinker Field from 2-5 pm.
Purchase a pit pass for only $10 more when buying tickets at Ticketmaster or the Amway Center Box Office. Or, pick up a free pit pass at participating Orlando area Southern Ford Dealers beginning January 6th (while supplies last). Pit Passes, along with a valid event ticket, get fans into the Pit Area.
Fans can also have the opportunity to ride in a real monster truck before the show between 1-7 pm in the lot across from Gate D. Monster Truck Rides are $10 per rider.
Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: 2014, 25th, jam, january, monster, orlando, ...
Universal Orlando and Warner Bros. announce “A Celebration of Harry Potter” in January 2014
Universal Orlando and Warner Bros. to Host Celebration of Harry Potter in January
UNIVERSAL ORLANDO RESORT AND WARNER BROS. TO HOST AN EVENT IN CELEBRATION OF HARRY POTTER IN JANUARY 2014
“A Celebration of Harry Potter” will Feature Exciting Activities Across Both Universal Studios and Universal’s Islands of Adventure from Jan. 24 – 26
Vacation Packages with Exclusive Benefits, Including Access to a Private Evening Reception in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Go on Sale Thursday, August 22 at Noon EST
Orlando, Fla. (August 7, 2013) – Universal Orlando Resort and Warner Bros. announced today that they will host “A Celebration of Harry Potter” – a special event for fans of all ages that will celebrate all of Harry’s adventures, from the beloved books to the Warner Bros. feature films.
Beginning January 24, 2014, fans will enjoy three days of unforgettable experiences – including interactive Q&As with Harry Potter talent and more. Special event vacation packages will go on sale August 22 and will include exclusive benefits such as access to a private evening reception held in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Full vacation package details are below.
Guests will have the opportunity to:
Attend Q&A sessions with Harry Potter talent, filmmakers, and other special guests (talent attendees will be announced at a later date)
Revisit some of their favorite Harry Potter film moments during a film tribute with Harry Potter talent and filmmakers (talent attendees will be announced at a later date)
Learn the art of “duelling” at a wand masterclass that’s featured at the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London – The Making of Harry Potter and hosted by Paul Harris – the choreographer who trained the cast of the Harry Potter films
Guests will also have access to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, located in Universal’s Islands of Adventure, where they can soar above Hogwarts on the thrilling attraction, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, sip Butterbeer at the Hog’s Head pub, see a wand choose a wizard in Ollivanders, explore iconic shops like Honeydukes, Zonko’s, and more.
While most of the activities for “A Celebration of Harry Potter” will be open to all Universal Orlando park guests and annual passholders, only guests who purchase the special event package will enjoy exclusive benefits and reserved seating for select events. Packages are extremely limited and go on sale at noon EST on Thursday, August 22. See below for full package details.
Packages for “A Celebration of Harry Potter” at Universal Orlando Resort On Sale at Noon EST on August 22, 2013
On-Site Hotel Celebration Vacation Package ~ Starts at $675 per adult, tax inclusive
· 3-night accommodations at one of Universal Orlando’s award-winning on-site hotels – including complimentary Universal Express access to select rides and attractions
3-day park-to-park ticket to both Universal’s Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios Florida
Access to the exclusive evening reception held in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter
Reserved seating for select events – including the Harry Potter film tribute, Q&A sessions and the wand masterclass
Early Park Admission to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and breakfast at the Three Broomsticks
Off-Site Hotel Celebration Vacation Package ~ Starts at $395 per adult, tax inclusive
Access to all celebration activities– including reserved seating for select events and access to the exclusive evening reception in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter
Note: This package does not include complimentary Universal Express access
Harry Potter continues to be a global phenomenon. Each of the seven books by author J.K. Rowling has broken sales records, with the series to date having sold over 450 million copies worldwide and translated into more than 70 languages. The Harry Potter films, produced by Warner Bros. Pictures, have grossed more than $7.7 billion to date worldwide at the box office, making Harry Potter the largest-grossing film franchise in history.
Vacation like you mean it at Universal Orlando Resort – where every heart pounding, jaw-dropping, goose-bumping second counts. With two incredible theme parks, Universal Studios Florida and Universal’s Islands of Adventure, three magnificently themed on-site hotels and a nighttime entertainment complex, Universal Orlando is the only place where you can turn spending time with your family into spending time as a family. Together, you can soar above Hogwarts with Harry Potter, swing above the streets with Spider-Man, be transformed into a banana-loving minion in the hilarious Despicable Me Minion Mayhem ride, and join Optimus Prime in the fight to save mankind on the new mega-attraction, TRANSFORMERS: The Ride – 3D.
A Time Warner Company, the fully integrated, broad-based studio is home to one of the most successful collections of brands in the world and stands at the forefront of every aspect of the entertainment industry from feature film, television and home entertainment production and worldwide distribution to DVD, digital distribution, animation, comic books, video games, product and brand licensing, international cinemas and broadcasting.
Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: 2014, announced, bros, celebration, harry, january, ...
“Paranormal Activity 4” Comes to Blu-ray/DVD on January 29th
THE GROUNDBREAKING HORROR PHENOMENON BRINGS MORE TERROR HOME WITH A SHOCKING UNRATED BLU-RAY™/DVD COMBO PACK
Debuting January 29, 2013, Blu-ray/DVD Combo Includes “The Recovered Files”— Nearly 30 Minutes of Found Footage Not Shown in Theaters!
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (December 18, 2012) – The global horror sensation that has mesmerized fans around the world continues to terrify and thrill audiences with the latest installment in the franchise, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4, debuting on January 29, 2013 in a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack with UltraViolet™ and a Digital Copy. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 continues the shocking story of the evil surrounding Katie and her nephew Hunter as a new family begins experiencing unexplained events that quickly turn deadly. Fans can be the first to own the newest chapter via Digital Download, which will be available on January 15, two weeks before the Blu-ray/DVD. The Digital Download will be available in either the theatrical version of the film or an unrated version with footage not seen in theaters.
The PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 Blu-ray/DVD combo pack includes both the theatrical version of the film and the unrated version, as well as “The Recovered Files” with nearly 30 minutes of new found footage. In addition, the Blu-ray/DVD combo available for purchase will be enabled with UltraViolet, a new way to collect, access and enjoy movies. With UltraViolet, consumers can add movies to their digital collection in the cloud, and then stream or download them – safely and securely – to a variety of devices.
The PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 Blu-ray is presented in 1080p high definition with English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, French 5.1 Dolby Digital, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, Portuguese 5.1 Dolby Digital and English Audio Description with English, English SDH, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles. The DVD in the combo pack is presented in widescreen enhanced for 16:9 televisions with English 5.1 Dolby Digital, French 5.1 Dolby Digital, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital and English Audio Description and English, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles.
The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack breakdown is as follows:
Original Theatrical Version of the Film (HD)
Unrated Version of the Film (HD)
The Recovered Files—nearly 30 minutes of found footage
Original Theatrical Version of the Film
Unrated Version of the Film
A single-disc DVD containing the theatrical and unrated versions of the film will also be available on January 29th.
Filed Under: Film Headlines Tagged With: 29th, 4, activity, bluraydvd, january, paranormal, ...
Black Veil Brides to Unleash “Wretched and Divine: the Story of the Wild Ones” on January 8th
BLACK VEIL BRIDES TO UNLEASH
WRETCHED AND DIVINE: THE STORY OF THE WILD ONES ON JANUARY 8th
VIA LAVA RECORDS/UNIVERSAL REPUBLIC
Pre-Order For Band’s Third Album Set For October 31st via iTunes
The Church Of The Wild Ones World Tour Kicks Off January 4th
(New York, NY – October 29, 2012) – Los Angeles based hard rockers Black Veil Brides return with their third album Wretched And Divine: The Story Of The Wild Ones. The album is being released on January 8th via Lava Records/Unviersal Republic. The album marks the band’s first full length release since 2011’s Set The World On Fire which debuted at #1 on the iTunes Rock chart, #4 on the iTunes overall album chart and #17 on the Billboard Top 200. The 19 track opus builds upon the signature sound the Black Veil Brides have created since their debut We Stitch These Wounds while showcasing their growth as musicians and songwriters. The pre-order for the new album goes live on iTunes on October 31st and fans who pre-order the whole album will be treated to an instant download of the first single “In The End” which was the theme song for WWE’s Hell In A Cell Pay-Per-View event recently. Wretched And Divive: The Story Of The Wild Ones was produced by John Feldmann known for his work with The Used, Neon Trees, Panic! At The Disco, and The Veronicas, among others.
Black Veil Brides will also be heading out on The Church Of The Wild Ones World Tour in support of the new album. The tour, which kicks off January 4th in Las Vegas, will cover two continents and four different countries before it ends on March 8th in San Francisco. The first leg will make stops in Denver, Houston, Philadelphia and New York to name a few before heading over to the United Kingdom. There, the band will make stops in Manchester, Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow and more before returning to the States for the second US leg of The Church Of The Wild Ones Tour. The band will also make a return to Mexico on February 23rd during this leg.
The tracklisting for Wretched And Divine: The Story Of The Wild Ones is:
1) Exordium
2) I Am Bulletproof
3) New Year’s Day
4) F.E.A.R. Transmission 1: Stay Close
5) Wretched And Divine
6) We Don’t Belong
7) F.E.A.R. Transmission 2: Trust
8) Devil’s Choir
9) Resurrect The Sun
10) Overture
11) Shadows Die
12) Abeyance
13) Days Are Numbered
14) Done For You
15) Nobody’s Hero
16) Lost It All
17) F.E.A.R. Transmission 3: As War Fades
18) In The End
19) F.E.A.R. Final Transmission
Black Veil Brides is Andy Biersack (vocals), Jake Pitts (guitars), Jinxx (guitars/violin), Ashley Purdy (bass) and Christian “CC” Coma (drums).
* TOUR DATES ATTACHED *
THE CHURCH OF THE WILD ONES WORLD TOUR
Hard Rock Café
Nile Theatre
Rams Head Live
The Trocadero
Starland Ballroom
Peabody’s
Jan 23rd
Best Buy Theatre
Altar Bar
Feb 3rd
Cardiff University Great Hall
Feb 4th
Bristol, UK
Southampton, UK
Norwich, UK
Liverpool, UK
Feb 21st
Feb 22nd
Crofoot Ballroom
Feb 23rd
Mexico City, MX
El Plaza Condesa
Mar 1st
Mar 2nd
Studio Seven
DEATH VALLEY HIGH Crafts Industrial for the Masses with New Album “CVLT [AS FVK]”
Donavon Frankenreiter Heads through Florida for his 2016 Tour starting March!
Dr. Dilznik and the Last Rekrute Release the First Video from Their New Album
Dr. Dilznik and the Last Rekrute Relese Their New Video, “Still the Same”
End of Days: Slayer Announces Final World Tour
Filed Under: Music Headlines Tagged With: 8th, black, brides, divine, january, story, ...
Lucasfilm’s “Red Tails” Will Take Flight on January 20, 2012
Leslie Odom Jr, Michael B. Jordan, Nate Parker, Kevin Phillips, David Oyelowo and Elijah Kelley portray some of the heroic Tuskegee Airmen in a scene from Lucasfilm’s epic action film Red Tails, in theaters January 20, 2012.
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (July 29, 2011) – A high-flying action epic inspired by the heroic exploits of the first all African-American aerial combat unit, the Lucasfilm Ltd. production of Red Tails will launch on January 20, 2012, released by Twentieth Century Fox. Produced by Rick McCallum and Charles Floyd Johnson, the gripping WWII actioner is directed by Anthony Hemingway (“Treme,” “The Wire,” “Battlestar Galactica”).
“I am humbled and honored to direct the story of the Tuskegee Airmen – heroes who have paved the way so others could have the opportunity to pursue their dreams,” said Hemingway. “To be selected by George Lucas and Rick to direct this film was more than my wildest dreams come true. It’s been a blessing to work with them, along with the amazingly talented artists at Industrial Light & Magic. I’ve grown a lot on many levels from this experience. As director, I had the fortune to work with a highly skilled crew from the Czech Republic, U.K. and the U.S., along with a remarkably talented group of actors. The resonant beauty, strength and dedication of our heroes is reflected in the powerful ensemble cast.”
Red Tails stars Oscar® winner Cuba Gooding Jr. (Jerry Maguire), Oscar nominee Terrence Howard (Crash), Emmy® winner Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”), Nate Parker (The Secret Life of Bees, The Great Debaters), David Oyelowo (The Last King of Scotland, Rise of the Planet of the Apes), Tristan Wilds (“90210”), Grammy® Award winner Cliff Smith aka Method Man (“The Wire”), Kevin Phillips (Pride), Rick Otto (“The Wire”), Lee Tergesen (Monster), Andre Royo (“Heroes”), Grammy-Award winner Ne-Yo (Stomp the Yard), Elijah Kelley (Hairspray), Marcus T. Paulk (Take the Lead), Leslie Odom Jr. (“Grey’s Anatomy”), Michael B. Jordan (“Friday Night Lights,” Chronicle) and Daniela Ruah (“NCIS”).
“I’ve wanted to do this film for a great many years,” said George Lucas, executive producer of Red Tails. “So it is especially gratifying to see it all come together. It has been a real pleasure to work with Anthony and the extraordinary cast on a project that we all passionately believe in. The Tuskegee Airmen were such superb pilots that it was essential for us to create visual effects that would live up to their heroism and put audiences in the cockpit with them. They were only in their early 20s when they performed these amazing feats,” Lucas added. “They became the best of the best—the top guns. It is an honor to bring to the screen a story inspired by their heroics.”
A trailer for the film will appear on www.Yahoo.com at 10am PDT Friday.
1944. As the war in Europe continues to take its toll on Allied forces, the Pentagon brass has no recourse but to consider unorthodox options – including the untried and untested African-American pilots of the experimental Tuskegee training program. Just as the young Tuskegee men are on the brink of being shut down and shipped back home, they are given the ultimate chance to show their courage. Against all the odds, with something to prove and everything to lose, these intrepid young airmen take to the skies to fight for their country – and the fate of the free world.
Filed Under: Film Headlines Tagged With: 20, 2012, flight, january, lucasfilms, red, ...
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From the front
South Korea’s New Navy Is Impressive … and Pointless
Kyle Mizokami
Seoul has bought itself a fancy new navy, but at the expense of troops guarding the peninsula
by KYLE MIZOKAMI
In July 2005 the South Korean navy took delivery of its largest warship to date. Two hundred meters long with a full-length flight deck and hangar, the amphibious assault ship Dokdo can carry up to 700 marines and 15 helicopters. It’s an impressive ship worthy of a world-class power — and the jewel of the Republic of Korea Navy.
It’s also completely unnecessary and a symbol of South Korea’s increasingly misplaced defense priorities.
In the country’s rush to embrace its destiny as a seagoing nation, South Korea has prematurely shifted resources from defending against a hostile North Korea to defeating exaggerated sea-based threats from abroad. Seoul is in the midst of a strategic shift that has shorted defenses against the North and put its forces in harm’s way.
This misguided pivot also calls into question justification for the continued stationing of American troops in South Korea.
Above — ROK Navy photo. At top — ROKS Dokdo. Republic of Korea navy photo
Destiny deferred, until now
South Korea has done an admirable job rebuilding from the Korean War, and its newfound prosperity and status is certainly worth defending. Surrounded on three sides by the sea, its economy dependent on exports, South Korea needs stable sea lanes. The country is a natural maritime power.
But for six decades the threat of a second invasion from North Korea tied up most of the South’s military resources, forcing Seoul to invest in ground forces and to a lesser extent the air force. This has no doubt frustrated those in the South who would like to realize South Korea’s maritime destiny.
But now it appears that South Korea’s naval advocates are winning the argument. Seoul has started building bigger and better ships, and its navy, by tonnage, is much bigger than that of North Korea. South Korea achieved a comfortable naval lead over the North decades ago but it still racing ahead.
The idea of South Korea as a maritime power is an eventuality. No one would deny it that. But it’s too soon.
The Dokdo islets. That’s it. That’s all there is. Wikipedia photo
Threats, real and imagined
Perhaps one of the most absurd territorial disputes between any two countries is the dispute over the South Korean islets called Dokdo. Dokdo is a tiny outcropping of rocks off the southern coast of South Korea. Claimed by both South Korea and Japan, it was occupied by South Korea in 1952. Uninhabitable due to the lack of fresh water, it is currently home to an elderly couple and a detachment of South Korean police.
South Koreans are emotionally invested in Dokdo. As a result, Seoul places an irrational amount of emphasis on protecting a minuscule amount of its territory from … Japan, of all places.
Demonstrations in South Korea supporting the island claim have in the past involved finger chopping, gut-stabbing and pheasant sacrifice. South Korean expatriates have sponsored billboards supporting the claim as far away as Dallas, Texas and Times Square in New York City.
South Korea has a complicated relationship with Japan that is alternately cordial, indifferent and downright frosty. It’s a relationship with the stain of Japan’s 40-year occupation of the Korean peninsula, for which many South Koreans believe Japan has not done enough to make amends.
The very country South Korea emulated to success is the very country it blames for leading it to the brink of national extinction. Tension generated by this relationship manifests as nationalism.
Seoul is worried that Japan will try to wrest Dokdo away by force. Yes, South Korea believes the avowedly pacifist country, with armed forces one-eleventh the size of the South Korean military, may suddenly risk international outrage and 70 years of peace to secure a handful of useless rocks.
South Korea even practices to defend Dokdo from attack. In June, the armed forces held a one-day exercise involving 10 ships and the country’s top-of-the-line F-15K fighter jets. The same exercise is usually held once or twice a year.
The Dokdo amphibious ship and its planned sister vessels is really not very useful against North Korea. The number of troops it could land is a pittance compared to the overall size of the North Korean military, and for operations in the string of islands near the demilitarized border helicopters are ideal.
But if you’re a South Korean defense planner and you’re worried that Japan may try to take the Dokdo islets, the ships are very useful.
ROKS Sejong the Great. Wikipedia photo
Questionable priorities
South Korea has made other questionable defense choices. In 2007, South Korea built the first of six Sejong the Great-class destroyers. At 8,500 tons each, the destroyers are packed with more firepower than the American Arleigh Burke-class destroyers they are patterned after.
They even have the Aegis combat system, the air-defense radar originally designed to defend American aircraft carriers against sophisticated air attacks.
One of the best things about the Aegis combat system is that the latest software upgrade allows for engagement of ballistic missiles. North Korea has a lot of ballistic missiles, and they are aimed at South Korea. The Aegis destroyers, expensive at $938 million dollars apiece, still sound like a justifiable investment.
There are two problems with that. First, North Korea does not have a sophisticated air force and for reasons to do with logistics and training probably could not launch many large-scale, sophisticated attacks. Second, South Korea bought the inferior version of the Aegis combat system software that is useless against ballistic missiles.
Why would South Korea bother spending nearly a billion dollars per ship for something that doesn’t actually add to the national defense? Six billion dollars could be used to buy some serious firepower. It could buy 700 K-2 Black Panther tanks and outfit two armored divisions that could shred invading North Korean tanks.
It could buy 1,800 K-9 mobile howitzers, the kind that were used to counterattack North Korean artillery after the attack on Yeonpyeong Island.
Incidentally, Japan was the first Asian country to have the Aegis combat system. It has, perhaps not coincidentally, six Aegis destroyers.
ROKS Cheonan, now turned into a memorial. U.S. Army photo
South Korea’s strategic choices are starting to make themselves apparent, and at each opportunity for validation it appears to have chosen wrong.
In 2010, a North Korean submarine sank the patrol vessel Cheonan with a torpedo, killing 46 sailors and wounding another 56. The Pohang-class vessel dated to the early 1980s, and by 2010 was obsolete. The class was so old that a year before the Cheonan attack the South Korean navy turned the lead ship into a museum.
Had Seoul started work on a replacement for the Pohang patrol ships instead of the totally unnecessary Dokdo, the vessel facing the North Korean submarine might have been a new ship with modern anti-submarine detection gear and weapons.
In 2011, North Korean artillery shelled the southern island of Yeonpyeong, killing two marines and two civilians. The latest, greatest additions to the Republic of Korea Navy could not have made the slightest difference.
South Korean artillery launched a counterattack but it was inaccurate, hampered by four of the six K-9 howitzers being inoperable at the time, and the Firefinder artillery radar malfunctioning. The lack of equipment readiness and poor accuracy of the counterattack suggests more resources should be allocated to training and maintaining ground forces.
U.S. Army Apache helicopters of the South Korea-based 2nd Infantry Division. 8th Army photo
Why is America still there?
The shift of South Korean defense spending into naval forces begs the question: if South Korea thinks it doesn’t have to spend money on ground forces, what are American ground forces doing in South Korea?
America has 28,000 troops in South Korea, including an infantry brigade and fighter squadrons. Their sole purpose is to halt a North Korean attack. They square off against a country with a large army and chemical and nuclear weapons.
If South Korea believes it’s time to start diverting resources to build a navy, then it logically follows that it also believes its ground forces are strong enough to handle whatever the North Korean military can throw at it. North Korea is after all the existential threat.
Military exercises to defend Dokdo reinforce the argument. It’s in the interests of American troops that their South Korean counterparts are as highly trained as possible. In wartime, improperly trained South Korean troops could cost American lives.
So is practicing to defend a series of worthless rocks from a pacifist country really the best use of resources? If it is, it might be time for American forces to leave.
All countries incorporate a certain amount of irrationality and nationalism in their defense planning; the United States is certainly no exception. But for a country facing an existential threat from a powerful neighbor and accepting the help of a foreign power in defending itself, South Korea’s margin for error is smaller than most countries. Seoul must discard emotional and unrealistic drivers of its defense policy.
South Korea’s destiny is as a naval power, and the impulse to shift the national direction to meet an onrushing future is entirely understandable.
But until the North Korea issue is settled that destiny must be deferred.
North Korea’s History of Violence
Rockets, gunboats and torpedoes are tools of Pyongyang’s diplomatic trade
It’s Time for the U.S. Military to Leave South Korea
Seoul can defend itself
America Has a South Korean Foreign Legion
Thousands of Seoul’s troops serve in U.S. Army units
War Is Boring
From drones to AKs, high technology to low politics, exploring how and why we fight above, on and below an angry world
Freelance writer on defense issues, I write for Medium, The Atlantic.com, Foreign Policy, The Diplomat, Combat Aircraft, The Japan Times. Twitter @kylemizokami
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Archives For Shipping container
Shanghai – World’s Largest Automated Terminal Begins Trials
December 13, 2017 — Leave a comment
Shanghai Yangshan Deep-Water Port’s Phase IV container terminal started its trial operations last Sunday. The 550-acre, $1.8 billion facility is the latest expansion of the Port of Shanghai’s complex on Yangshan Island, which has deeper water than the port operator’s mainland terminals.
The Port of Shanghai is already the busiest for container traffic in the world, handling a record 37 million TEU in 2016, and the new automated Phase IV terminal will cement its leading position with an additional seven berths and 4-6 million TEU of capacity. Phase III began operations in 2008, but the global financial crisis delayed construction of the long-planned Phase IV until 2014.
According to Chinese state media, Phase IV is the world’s largest automated container terminal, with computer-controlled bridge cranes, AGVs and rail-mounted gantry cranes. All of the equipment is Chinese-made, and the facility also uses a Chinese-designed automated terminal management system. About 100 out of a total of 280 pieces of the automated equipment have already been delivered and are in testing.
“The automated terminal not only increases the port’s handling efficiency, but also reduces carbon emissions by up to 10 percent,” said Chen Wuyuan, president of Shanghai International Port Group, speaking to Xinhua.
Yangshan is the biggest deepwater port in the world. Phase I was finished in 2004, and the following year construction wrapped up on a 20-mile, six-lane bridge to connect the facility to the mainland. Extensive land reclamation allowed for the construction of Phases I through III on new ground adjacent to the islands of Greater and Lesser Yangshan, which were previously home to small fishing communities.
The port handles about 40 percent of Shanghai’s exports, and its operators hope to see it grow as a transshipment hub as well. As of 2016, it operates under a free trade zone status, which speeds up customs procedures and facilitates transferring or storing foreign-origin cargoes. Source: Maritime Executive, 11 December, 2017. Pictures: China State Media
In Cargo carrier, Containerization, International Shipping, International Trade, Logistics, Ports, shipping container automated container terminal, China, Container ship, Container terminal, customs procedures, deepwater port, Free trade zone, Shanghai Yangshan Port Phase IV, shipping berth, Shipping container, TEU
Zbox – New Collapsible Container
A new collapsible 20ft container, which is currently in development, promises to save operators both money and space both at the terminal and in the supply chain, according to Port Strategy.
Navlandis’s ZBox claims to be able to take the place of empty containers, which take up around 25% of sea traffic, slashing both logistics and transportation costs.
This is because five folded units can fit into the space occupied by a current standard container potentially reducing operating costs by up to 50% and CO emissions by up to 20%.
This container has the same strength as conventional containers. In addition, it can be handled with the same machinery at all freight ports and with minimum human resources, which will make operating costs much more competitive.
The technology is still at prototype stage but reportedly has the backing of the Port of Valencia. Navlandis said that a good number of shipping companies have shown interest too.
Navlandis said that the 20-foot container complies with all ISO and CSC certifications, ensuring all loading, resistance and watertightness requirements of the logistics industry, with the same dimensions as a standard container. In addition, it is manufactured with the same parts as the standards require. Source: Port Strategy
In Containerization, International Shipping, International Trade, Logistics, shipping container containerisation, Navlandia, Shipping container, Zbox collapsable container
Nigeria – APMT’s Biggest Ever Port Investment
The Maersk-owned company APM Terminals has revealed it is investing about 14 billion kroner (US$2 billion dollars) into a new port in Bagadry, Nigeria, in what will be its biggest ever investment. The port will become the second-largest port in Africa – only surpassed by Port Said in Egypt – and is a clear signal that the Danish shipping giant’s terminal operator sees the African continent as a long-term hotbed for economic growth.
“We are currently purchasing property from the state and will start construction later this year. The port is scheduled to be completed in 2019,” David Skov, the managing director for APM Terminals in Nigeria, told Børsen business newspaper.
“Globally, it will be APM Terminal’s largest ever investment and marks a strategic shift to multi ports. It means we will supplement our own experience in container ports with the establishment of a free zone, an oil port and a bulk port, so in other words a complete port.”
APMT recently acted on its decision to invest $1.5 billion on the Port of Tema in Ghana, Africa, with the establishment of a Greenfield port outside of the existing facility and upgrades to the adjacent road network.
In Cargo carrier, Containerization, International Shipping APM Terminals, foreign investment, Maersk, Nigeria, Port, Shipping container
Customs Vietnam make 2nd huge Ivory Bust in a fortnight
Customs officers in central Vietnam have seized a tonne of ivory and four tonnes of the scaly hide of the pangolin, according to authorities today.
Officials found the contraband on Tuesday inside a shipping container labelled as carrying red beans from Malaysia that arrived at the central port city of Da Nang on Aug 10.
“This is the largest amount of ivory and pangolin smuggling we have discovered in Da Nang,” Dang Van Toan, the port’s head of customs, told the German Press Agency.
The pangolin is an endangered type of armoured anteater found in parts of Asia and Africa. The flesh is sold as an exclusive, but illegal, meat, and the hide is used for traditional medicine and fashion.
The weight of the hides found this week corresponds to around 4,000 individuals, Le Xuan Canh, former head of the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources, told DPA. Tuesday’s haul brings to nearly eight tonnes the total of tusks, horns and hide from endangered species impounded over the past two weeks in Da Nang.
Last Friday the port’s customs officers seized more than two tonnes of elephant tusks. Eight days earlier they confiscated nearly a tonne of elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns, authorities said.
The three shipments were posted to two local companies, which have denied any knowledge of the smuggling, said Pham Van Thieng, deputy head of the central region’s anti-smuggling team.
Trafficking of endangered species and their parts violates international law. Like elephant ivory and rhino horn, pangolin is considered a sign of status among some of Vietnam’s wealthy elite.
In Contraband, Customs, Illicit Goods anti-smuggling team, contraband, Customs officer, elephant tusks, illicit goods, Ivory, pangolin, Shipping container, smuggling, Vietnam Customs
Box Innovation – More Volume and Higher Payloads
February 21, 2013 — Leave a comment
A revolutionary new container design is set to change the economics of shipping palletised cargo, allowing cargo owners and consolidators to increase significantly the volume of cargo shipped at any one time.
Maritime-Executive.com recently featured the following article. UK-based container design company Container Group Technology (CGT) Ltd has announce the availability of the 20-20 SeaCell Container. From the outside the patented ‘20-20’ looks little different from a conventional ISO 20ft shipping container. However, subtle innovations on the outside and inside of the container enable the unit to provide for 36% greater pallet space.
In practical terms, this means that for each tier, 15 Euro-pallets (1200mm x 800mm) can be loaded into the container instead just 11 Euro-pallets in a standard ISO 20ft dry container. With standard ISO pallets (1200mm x 1000mm), the 20-20 can load 12 units, two more than in a conventional 20ft container (see graphic).
And by using 100% of the floor area, pallets fit snugly together inside the container making the 20-20 ideal for using lightweight slip-sheets or paper pallets, thereby reducing costs and increasing useable volume and payload at the same time.
The 20-20 SeaCell Container achieves this feat by being exactly 20ft (6096mm) in length and 2426mm wide internally. Standard 20ft containers are, in fact, 19ft 10½ ins (6058mm) long x 7ft 7¾ ins (2330mm) wide internally. Thus the internal length of the 20-20 allows it to accommodate the additional four Euro-pallets or two ISO pallets per tier. The door opening width is 2408mm which allows fork-lift trucks to load pallets two or three at a time.
However, the innovation does not stop there. Two 20-20 containers can be easily locked together from the outside with no special tools to make a 40ft container, but again with significantly greater internal volume than standard. Two 20-20 containers will carry six more pallets than one standard 40ft container. It is also possible to mix Euro & Standard pallets in the same 20-20 and still have 100% pallet utilisation.
The 20-20 is fitted with larger corner castings of the type typically used in flat rack containers, enabling them to be lifted by standard 20ft or 40ft spreaders, loaded singly or as a pair into a container ship’s 40ft cells or onto any current road chassis and rail wagon.
An integral locking mechanism in the corner casting is activated from the outside of the container. In just a few minutes, the two 20-20 containers can be securely locked together and lifted as a single ‘40ft’ unit. In the standard configuration, two 20-20s are joined at the front ends, i.e., with the doors accessible at each end of the combined containers. However, if requested CGT can also position the locking mechanism at the door-end corner castings so that the two 20-20 units are effectively sealed until reaching their final destination. This is an important feature for high value or sensitive cargoes.
Lifting two 20ft containers together has been made possible in the past decade by innovations in container lifting technology, and it has become increasingly popular with shipping lines and container port terminals as a way of loading and discharging ships faster and more efficiently.
However, it is only now, with the introduction of the 20-20 SeaCell Container, that the ability to lock and lift two 20ft containers and handle them as a single 34 ton maximum gross weight (MGW) unit has been made possible. The benefits of this innovation are numerous, including:
It can significantly reduce ship loading times and the time needed to lash containers on deck.
Estimates suggest it could reduce handling and transportation costs by 25% to 35%.
The fact that 20-20 containers can be linked or unlinked at any stage of the logistics’ chain should also reduce the need for empty repositioning, thereby optimising each container’s usage.
Prototypes of the 20-20 container have been built and fully tested in China, and the new design is being made available for sale or lease.
How much bigger can container ships get? (mpoverello.com)
In Logistics, Trade Facilitation Container ship, International Organization for Standardization, Pallet, Shipping container, Twistlock
Pandora’s Box – Missiles in a shipping container
January 16, 2013 — Leave a comment
Artistic impression of the Club K Missile System
Critical Logistics, an informative blog, reported an interesting if not disturbing article on the development of a new weapon’s system which uses the ubiquity of shipping containers as it is housed in a 40-footer. It is known as the Club-K Container Missile System.
An article by concerned commentator, Lajos F. Szaszdi, (The Heritage Network) raises several valid concerns in his article “The Club-K: A Deadly “Pandora’s Box” of Cruise Missiles”, which are summarised in the following paragraphs.
[…] Fittingly, the marketing name given to the system is “Pandora’s Box.” The container-looking weapon system can be fired from a container ship, a train cart, or a container truck. By appearing externally as a simple container, the Club-K can be positioned covertly, ready to unleash a surprise attack, probably firing simultaneously from more than one container.
[…] Container ships carrying the Club-K system could be used to attack commercial shipping, particularly in choke points like the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca. These container ships would be acting like Germany’s auxiliary cruisers of the First and Second World Wars, which were armed merchant ships used for commerce raiding. Cargo ships armed with the Club-K could be equipped with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to provide airborne Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR).
Even though use by Hezbollah is a possibility, the greatest potential threat could come from China, which reportedly was already interested in acquiring Club missiles for its submarines of the Type 041 Yuan class, the nuclear-powered Type 093 Shang class, and Russian-made Kilo class subs. China could load container ships with land-attack missiles, with E-Bombs for a surprise attack against Taiwan, and armed with nuclear warheads and E-Bombs to strike the port facilities used by the U.S. Navy in Singapore, the U.S. West Coast, the Panama Canal, etc. Chinese missiles could be launched from container trucks sent secretly to Mexico mixed with legitimate containers. India, another customer of the SS-N-27, could use the Club-K system against Pakistan or China as a first or second strike weapon. Iran could be another customer for the Club-K, once U.N. sanctions are lifted.
The Club-K is a highly destabilizing weapon system. Due to the nature of international trade, with millions of containers being shipped worldwide, transported by train and particularly by trucks, it would be very hard to detect, and an attack could happen at any time on any day without warning. The military and intelligence services of the U.S. and its allies must keep a close watch on this Pandora’s Box, to make sure it will never be opened in anger against them.
A promotional video of the system by (oddly named) manufacturer Concern Agat appears below. http://
For more details on the system visit their website – http://www.concern-agat.com/products/defense-products/81-concern-agat/189-club-k
In Container Security, International Shipping, Weapons of Mass Destruction bombs, Club K system, Concern Agat, container security, Container ship, Containerization, maritime security, missile system, Shipping container, TEU
Thinking Inside the Box
The fluid transition from sea to land
Here’s an interesting view on containers, presented by Alex Colas from Birkbeck University, USA. Colas highlights that containers have been fundamental drivers of global processes and have had an unprecedented effect on logistics and labour organisations. Moreover Colas demonstrates that containers as well as being transformative objects in themselves, have also transformed the way in which circulatory barriers have been overcome through seamless transitions from water to land. Containers are a worthy protagonist of material analysis in international systems and there is much room in academic discourse for the full story of the container to unfold. Herewith the link to the article Thinking Inside the Box, available on the blog – Geopolitics & Security.
Thinking Outside and Beyond the Box : Let’s Reinvent the Shipping Container (gcaptain.com)
In Cargo carrier, Container Security, International Shipping, International Trade, Logistics Alex Colas, box, container, container security, Shipping container, TEU
Is Google moving into box tracking?
The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted Internet search giant Google a patent on a system for securing, monitoring and tracking containers. According to United States Patent 8284045, it describes a two-way communication system, supported by an electronic bolt seal, a network gateway, a web-based platform, and a mobile device, that allows containers to be networked for the transfer of data. Shipping containers are networked for transferring data between the shipping containers. The shipping containers include sensors for detecting conditions associated with the shipping containers. The conditions sensed by any shipping container whether transported by rail or ship is transmitted from an ad hoc network, via a gateway configured for satellite or cellular communications for example, to a container-tracking application server or equivalent computer system. The computer system is remotely located to the shipping container for central compilation, analysis, and/or display of data regarding the shipping containers.
The system describes an environmental sensor that can travel with a product within a carrier’s logistics network. The environmental sensor being configured to sense an environmental condition capable of affecting the product to generate product environment data. The system includes a scanner configured to read product environment data from the environmental sensor. The system also includes a hub control unit configured to communicate with the scanner and receive the product environment data from the scanner and determines whether the product environment data transcends a limit of exposure of the product to an environmental condition. The hub control unit is also configured to generate a transporting instruction to redirect transport of the product to an alternate destination different from its original destination if the hub control unit determines that the product environment data indicates the environmental condition of the product has transcended the limit of exposure. What a mouthful! I dare say that there are people out there that can decipher the patent content and relate to its various diagrams. If you are interested in this topic, please visit the following link – http://www.archpatent.com/patents/8284045. Also visit the Patent Buddy for similar information. Hopefully as the business case for this patent unfolds things may become a bit more clearer – and perhaps a little sinister too for some!
In Container Security, Container Security Initiative, Information Technology, International Shipping, Logistics, RFID, SAFE Framework, Seals, Trade Facilitation container tracking, Google, logistics, Patent, security seal, Shipping container, Shipping container architecture, United States, United States Patent & Trademark Office, US Patent 8284045
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→Kauai – Hawaii, U.S.A.
Kauai – Hawaii, U.S.A.
The Garden (of Eden) Isle
The greenest and oldest island in the Hawaiian archipelago, lush and timeless Kauai is essentially a single massive volcano that rises 3 miles from the earth’s floor, and has provided a scene-stealing vision of Paradise for many a Hollywood movie and TV show, including Jurassic Park, Blue Hawaii, King Kong, and Fantasy Island.
With just 5 percent of the state’s population, Kauai’s people are known as the friendliest in the fiftieth state, and tend to live a rural and unrushed old-time Hawaiian lifestyle, in which natural beauty and not overly plush Maui-style resort life is the focus.
About 30 miles at its widest (you can drive around it in two hours), the relatively small island is two-thirds impenetrable, but what a wallop that final third delivers. The island’s beauty peaks at the north shore, possibly the most beautiful spot in all Hawaii.
Its Na Pali (“The Cliffs”) Coast is said to be some of the fastest eroding land on earth, with deep folds and sawtooth 3,000-foot-high seacliffs un-breached by roads, though hiking trails lead down to the coast’s exquisite beaches and secluded sea caves. Helicopter tours are available, but the best way to experience the stunning 15-mile stretch of thickly jungled shore at the foot of these craggy palisades is by inflatable boat, kayak, or (for experienced hikers) via the strenuous Kalalau Trail.
Princeville Resort is one of the state’s largest and most challenging golf destinations, offering two different Robert Trent Jones Jr.-designed courses: the Makai Course, with its three 9-hole loops, and the 18-hole Prince Course, named Hawaii’s number-one course by Golf Digest. It comprises a series of tiers leading down a seaside bluff, and is every bit as beautiful as the forested cliffs and Hanalei Bay it overlooks.
Kauai lays claim to Hawaii’s most dazzling beaches, among which Hanalei’s 2-mile strip – Kauai’s surfing central – is the finest and the most famous. This is where Mitzi Gaynor washed Rossano Brazzi right out of her hair in the 1957 classic South Pacific, and also the fairy-tale home where Puff the Magic Dragon frolicked in the autumn mists.
Poipu Beach, at the center of the island’s southern coast, is another of the island’s legendary beauty spots, famous for its diving opportunities and for glam resorts such as the 50-acre Hyatt Regency Kauai Resort and Spa, with its lavishly landscaped and environmentally sensitive grounds, open-air spa, and Robert Trent Jones Jr.-designed championship golf course. Nearby Kapaa, whose population of 5,000 makes it the largest town on the island, offers another winning beach on the island’s Royal Coconut Coast.
Waimea, known chiefly as the place where British captain James Cook first dropped anchor in Hawaii in 1778, is another strollable town. Located at the mouth of the 14-mile-long Waimea Canyon, it was dubbed the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific” by Mark Twain. Belvederes look out over the 2-mile wide, 3,000-foot-deep gorge, painted in rich ocher, russet, and amber.
The only accommodations to speak of on the west coast are Waimea Plantation Cottages, a collection of fifty workers’ homes from the early 1900s that have been restored and relocated here within a lovely beachside coconut grove. Enveloped in an old-time plantation atmosphere (sugarcane remains one of the island’s major agricultural products), they still feel like homes.
Mount Waialeale stands at the center of the nearly round island, its 5,148-foot summit said to be one of the wettest spots on earth with an average annual rainfall of 444 inches, leaving it perpetually hidden by clouds.
The rest of the island receives far less precipitation (with parts getting only 35 inches per year), though on average it gets more than the rest of Hawaii. As a result, the island is known in Hawaiian lore as the birthplace of the rainbow. It’s so extravagantly covered with flowers and dense hothouse vegetation that it seems like one large botanical garden, earning it the nickname of the “Garden Isle.”
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Coalition Chair
What Does Infrastructure Mean to the Midwest?
Local Job Creation and Economic Impact
A Safer Way to Move Energy
Managing Agricultural Energy Costs
Improved Rail Capacity
As Dakota Access Nears Completion, America Still Needs Pipeline Infrastructure
In recent weeks, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers handed down the final easement needed for the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross Lake Oahe in my home state of North Dakota. The pipeline is just days away from becoming operational. While legal battles will likely continue to be waged, court rulings to date have consistently validated the process that led to approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline. As protest camps in the region clear out, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the toll that those activities took on the residents and the environment of North Dakota.
According to the latest reports, clean-up crews have removed as much as 48 million pounds of garbage from the Oceti Sakowin camp, costing taxpayers as much as $1 million. This unprecedented level of negligence stood as a threat to the region’s environment, until the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and state officials intervened and evacuated the camps. With rising temperatures and spring thaws on the way, the refuse could have been washed directly into the Missouri River system. With all the rhetoric about protecting the water, the trash left behind by protestors posed a far more imminent threat to water than the pipelines buried far underneath it. Thankfully, the authorities intervened before more serious damage was done.
Looking beyond Dakota Access to the future of other pipeline infrastructure projects, some key facts merit consideration.
First, for the foreseeable future, residents of the United States will continue to rely on petroleum products such as crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids like butane, ethane and propane to sustain their everyday lives. Second, pipelines remain, by far, the safest means by which to transport those energy goods. Third, the United States continues to work steadily toward the diversification of its energy sources, utilizing energy goods produced here at home and lessening our reliance on energy from volatile regions elsewhere in the world. Fourth, a pressing need for infrastructure remains in growing production regions within the United States – such as the Marcellus, Bakken, and Permian shale regions – to markets within and for export to allies abroad.
Continue Reading >>
Tags: Dakota Access, Infrastructure, Pipelines
Reflecting on the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Next Chapter for the Bakken
In 2014, North Dakota began permitting discussions for the Dakota Access Pipeline. Now, after over two years of discussion, permitting, and construction Dakota Access is nearing completion. This 1,172-mile infrastructure project was designed to transport Bakken crude oil to a hub in Patoka, Illinois. There it will be distributed for consumption by Americans across the country. This first critical pipeline infrastructure link […]
In recent weeks, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers handed down the final easement needed for the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross Lake Oahe in my home state of North Dakota. The pipeline is just days away from becoming operational. While legal battles will likely continue to be waged, court rulings to date have consistently […]
Dakota Access Oil Line Outlasts Protests, Readies for Service
In the end, the pipeline won. Dakota Access, which became a rallying point for tens of thousands of anti-fossil fuel and Native American-rights protesters, is preparing for service, a court filing on Monday showed. Now that the last segment built underneath Lake Oahe has been filled with oil, it’s only a matter of time before […]
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Tickets On Sale For Sting’s “The Last Ship” in Toronto
Sting will star in the Canadian production of his epic musical, The Last Ship! The limited engagement, presented at the Princess Of Wales Theatre in Toronto, will premiere on February 9 and performances are scheduled through March 24.
Featuring original music and lyrics by Sting as well as a few of his best-loved songs ("Island of Souls," "All This Time" and "When We Dance"), this personal, heartfelt and empowering musical comes to Toronto direct from the acclaimed UK and Ireland tour.
Tickets go on sale to the general public on Monday, November 12, but Sting.com members will receive early access to tickets, beginning on Thursday, November 8 at 10 a.m. . If you are not yet a member, now is the time to sign up!
PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE: Shows are scheduled at 8 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Additionally, matinee shows are available on Wednesdays, Saturdays (except opening night, February 9) and Sundays.
STING.COM PRESALE: We will observe our member access rules:
Legacy members: Code prefix STSHA - Access begins @ 10 a.m.
Standard/New members: Code prefix STSHB - Access begins @ 11 a.m.
Login to Sting.com and visit your Profile page where you can verify your member status. It will show "Legacy" or "Standard," based on your member level.
When our presale begins, go to the Tour page where you will find your unique presale code at the top of the page. Scroll down and click the GET TICKETS link for your show date.
If you have questions regarding your membership, please visit our HELP page.
TICKET LIMIT: There is a 14-ticket purchase limit per show.
The greatest train journey on Earth? The musician Sting imagines his perfect rail trip...
The journey on the express train from Firenze Santa Maria Novella to Roma Termini takes, on average, 1 hr 25 mins and is less than 200 miles in distance. If you have a choice between taking the car or the train to Rome, think about it for a moment – then choose the train...
Sting and Shaggy tour in Phoenix: Every little thing they did was magic...
Based entirely on anecdotal evidence, the most common reaction to news that Sting and Shaggy were collaborating on an album then touring clubs and theaters was either "Why?" or something slightly more dismissive. Having seen them work their magic on a packed house Sunday night at The Van Buren, it makes way more sense in practice than it does on paper...
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Miguel Releases ‘Pineapple Skies’ [LISTEN]
Miguel is gearing up to release his fourth studio project, War & Leisure. On Thursday (Nov. 16), he dropped a new single called "Pineapple Skies."
The song is finger-snapping jam with the R&B singer crooning affectionate lyrics to his lover. The uptempo ballad follows behind his previous released singles, “Sky Walker,” “Shockandawe” and “Told You So.”
In an interview with Billboard, Miguel said that his album will feature his signature love ballads but they will also have political undertones.
“We’re trying not to pay attention, but we have to pay attention,” said Miguel about his project. “With my albums, I always try to take a picture of what’s going on in my life. War & Leisure has political undertones, because that’s what life feels like right now."
"This album is intentionally about the ethos right now, that we are right in the middle of all this. We’re trying to flourish in the middle of all this," he continues. "We all wake up, and it’s time to be creative and amazing and positive and all the things that we’re supposed to be when you look on Instagram, but then we’re dealing with these same problems, this injustice, wars between politicians with egos. Like, 140 characters are going to get us into a war right now?”
Miguel's War & Leisure album will arrive on Dec. 1. You can pre-order the album right now on iTunes.
Source: Miguel Releases ‘Pineapple Skies’ [LISTEN]
Filed Under: Miguel
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Boyd County Farm Bureau Couple Take Home NEFB’s Young Farmer and Rancher Achievement Award
KEARNEY, NEB. – Kyle and Tiffany Lechtenberg of Boyd County Farm Bureau were honored as Nebraska Farm Bureau's 2018 Young Farmers and Ranchers Achievement in Agriculture Award winners at the Nebraska Farm Bureau 101st Annual Convention Tuesday, Dec. 4 at the Younes Conference Center in Kearney.
Farm Bureau members 18 to 35 years of age apply for the award. The Lechtenbergs were selected on the basis of performance in farm or ranch management, setting and achieving goals, overcoming obstacles, and service to the community and Farm Bureau.
The Lechtenberg farm is near Butte, where Kyle grew up. They have diversified their farm, raising row crops, alfalfa, cattle, and managing a trucking business. Tiffany grew up with an agriculture background in Broken Bow as her family owns and operates Arrow Seed Company. Kyle earned two degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in agricultural economics and animal science. Tiffany earned her Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Nebraska Medical Center and now works as a registered nurse in O’Neill. The couple married in 2009.
The main profit center of the Lechtenberg’s Farm, which has been named NorthView Family Farms, LLC, is a commercial alfalfa operation where they provide a custom hay brokering, harvesting, and hay hauling business. Having diversity in the operation allows the Lechtenbergs to purchase and/or produce additional commodities to sell at premium rates.
Kyle started farming and ranching in 2002, when he started a cow herd with his brother. In 2003, two additional brothers and his parents joined all their cattle assets together and named it Lechtenberg Cattle Company. In college, he then began working at a hay company, named Eagle Alfalfa. The owner asked Kyle if he would be interested in buying his commercial alfalfa business, and in 2008 Kyle purchased the Eagle Alfalfa company and merged it with Lechtenberg Cattle Company. At this point the only remaining partners in the company were Kyle and his parents, with Tiffany joining the business partnership after their marriage. Then in 2012, they rebranded their farm and renamed it NorthView Family Farms, LLC.
“Renaming the company has allowed us to pursue other diverse enterprise opportunities. Since the rebranding and setting a clear vision for our future, our farm has expanded to employ five full-time, and two to four seasonal employees along with multiple independent contractors,” Kyle said.
Setting marketing goals is important to the success of NorthView Family Farms, LLC. They recently launched a website to add value to both customers and land owners alike. They have an active Facebook page and send out monthly newsletters, customer letters, and pride themselves in building strong customer relationships.
“We are always planning for the future in our operation and are excited to find new ways to serve those in our community. We work diligently to find new opportunities, analyze those options, and plan for future growth and improvements. There’s no better feeling than knowing the work we are doing literally puts food on the table for both us as produces and for consumers all over the world,” Tiffany said.
The Lechtenbergs balance busy schedules with farm life, volunteer activities, and with Nebraska Farm Bureau. The Lechtenbergs have four children, Joycin, twins Addison and Austin and their youngest son Jackson. Both Kyle and Tiffany serve as the North Central representatives on the Nebraska Farm Bureau Young Farmers and Ranchers Committee and they both serve on the Boyd County Farm Bureau board of directors. Tiffany is cofounder of a MOMS group at the Butte Community Bible Church. As winners of the Young Farmers and Ranchers Achievement Award, the Lechtenbergs will receive a $500 cash prize and an all-expense paid trip to the 2019 American Farm Bureau Annual Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana in January, where they will compete in the national contest.
The Nebraska Farm Bureau is a grassroots, state-wide organization dedicated to supporting farm and ranch families and working for the benefit of all Nebraskans through a wide variety of educational, service and advocacy efforts. More than 61,000 families across Nebraska are Farm Bureau members, working together to achieve rural and urban prosperity as agriculture is a key fuel to Nebraska’s economy. For more information about Nebraska Farm Bureau and agriculture, visit www.nefb.org.
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Mourners Pay Tribute to President George H.W. Bush at US Capitol
Streams of mourners filed past the flag-draped casket of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, a day ahead of the state funeral for the country's 41st president.
U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump were set to privately offer their condolences to Bush's son, former President George W. Bush, the country's 43rd president, former first lady Laura Bush and other Bush family members at Blair House, the presidential guest house across the street from the White House.
Trump commented on the occasion on Twitter.
Trump and his wife joined mourners at the Capitol Rotunda Monday night. They paused steps from Bush's casket for a minute, with Trump saluting and Melania Trump placing her hand over her heart, before they quietly walked away.
Trump has often aimed political taunts at the Bush family, long a symbol of the traditional, more moderate wing of the U.S. Republican party that often is at odds with Trump's populist supporters. The elder Bush never warmed to Trump and voted for Trump's 2016 challenger, Democrat Hillary Clinton.
But Trump wrote members of Congress to hail Bush as a man who 'led a life that exemplified what is truly great about America. President Bush worked selflessly throughout his long life to bring about a world of justice and lasting peace.'
Before the public started walking past Bush's casket, U.S. political dignitaries praised him as an American hero in World War II, a statesman, a world leader and, perhaps most of all, as a decent man full of grace. Bush died last week at the age of 94 at his home in Texas after years of failing health.
Vice President Mike Pence said 'President Bush was a great leader who made a great difference in the life of this nation. But he was also just a good man, who was devoted to his wife, his family and his friends.' Pence said there was a kindness about Bush 'that was evident to everyone who ever met him.'
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said America stands with the Bush family 'in mourning but also in gratitude. Gratitude for lives well-lived and duties thoroughly fulfilled.'
House Speaker Paul Ryan said 'here lies a great man, a gentle soul. ... His legacy is grace perfected.'
The public viewing of Bush's casket extends until early Wednesday when the casket will be transported to Washington National Cathedral for the state funeral.
The Episcopal service will include four eulogies, from Bush's son, the former president, former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Evan Meacham, who wrote a biography of Bush. The Trumps are attending the funeral but are not expected to speak.
What does it mean to lie in state?
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Political analyst Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia said Bush's stature among the country's 45 presidents has grown in the quarter century since he left office.
'It's pretty obvious as people look back, and as people are recollecting the Bush presidency, it looks a heck of a lot better than it did at the end of it,' Sabato told VOA. 'Bush, of course, was defeated for re-election, and most people at the time considered him a failed president' because of a recession during his time in the White House.
'But now, I think we can see in retrospect that he was actually quite successful,' Sabato said, particularly in foreign affairs, as he helped shape the Western response to the demise of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany. He also led the U.S. to a military victory in reversing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's takeover of Kuwait.
Moreover, Sabato said, Bush benefits from a comparison with Trump's demeanor nearly halfway through the current president's first term in the White House.
'To be honest, at one point in history,' Sabato said, 'it would not have been exceptional to have a president who obeyed and appreciated the norms of the American system and of the presidency, who was civil, who was kind to people and who rose above petty squabbles. But you know, things have changed, particularly in the last couple years. And the contrast between George H.W. Bush and the current president could not be more stark.'
Trump has designated Wednesday as a national day of mourning in Bush's honor. The New York Stock Exchange will be closed, as are most government offices.
Victor Beattie, Kenneth Schwartz, and Megan Duzor contributed.
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Board chairman urges support for UNC system president
Alex Derosier
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — The chairman of the North Carolina university system’s Board of Governors asked members Friday to unite behind the system’s president amid ongoing disagreements among leadership.
In his first meeting as chairman of the board, Harry Smith urged members at the mid-year meeting to set aside political differences and support President Margaret Spellings.
“It is my hope this board will unite behind Margaret Spellings, give her a voice, and let her be heard,” Smith said before going into a closed session. “She has great experience, knowledge, and it is my hope we recognize that.”
Spellings is less than halfway through her five-year contract as university system president. The former education secretary for President George W. Bush took over as head of the 17-campus system in March 2016. She was selected after the Republican-dominated university board forced out a predecessor named when Democrats had greater influence.
Smith told reporters at a press conference after the board meeting that his call for members to back Spellings was not related to any single issue, but it comes after several weeks of controversy on the board.
Earlier this month, the board failed to approve Spellings’ nominee for Western Carolina University chancellor, who withdrew because of direct interference from a board member, the Raleigh News & Observer reported Friday. In a UNC board meeting Thursday, information emerged that board member Tom Fetzer had personally involved himself in the vetting process for the nominee, a move other members said was outside the authority of the body, the newspaper reported.
Spellings also has faced criticism for her handling of protests of a Confederate monument on the flagship Chapel Hill campus. She was reproached for a decision last year to request added security in the wake of deadly racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. A majority of board members signed a letter criticizing “weakness” instead of a display of strength as protesters planned a huge demonstration to demand the removal of a Confederate soldier statue from a central spot on campus.
Spellings and former governing board chairman Louis Bissette wrote to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper seeking state help with security because campus police feared a potentially dangerous confrontation.
Spellings called leadership conflicts growing pains, telling reporters that disagreements among leadership are part of an ongoing process.
“I think we’ve all learned a few things over the past couple of weeks, and I look forward to continuing the conversation,” she said.
Associated Press writer Emery Dalesio contributed to this report.
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You are here: NUHA Foundation > Blog > Youth > Let us light the fire
Let us light the fire
Posted on October 19, 2013 by the Editor
By Yoojin Chung. Yoojin, 18, studies at the Korean Minjok Leadership Academy, in Seoul, South Korea.
At the start of September every year, newspapers begin to publish a salvo of articles bemoaning the death of education: high school students are dropping out; college graduates cannot find work; students are disinterested and unmotivated. Every year, legislative bodies attempt reforms, and every year, the bemoaning continues. The problems with the education system today are chronic problems, and like with all chronic problems, a complete reappraisal of the nature of the crisis is necessary. I believe this reappraisal should begin with an analysis of W.B. Yeats’s quote: “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
In today’s world, the importance of SAT’s, AP’s, and GMAT’s in determining levels of education are increasingly affirming the idea that standardization is taking on a dominant, rather than supplementary, role in the learning process. To achieve higher education, a student must first learn to gear himself towards these tests; those who fail to do so abandon school or are abandoned by it. In other words, we are increasingly educating our students to memorize and study for certain multiple choice tests where creativity, i.e. thinking differently from the test makers’ intentions, may be punished with low scores. A student is limited to the items in his pail, and to ignite himself and his curiosity in this system may result in self-immolation.
The problem with today’s education system, then, lies with a misunderstanding of the nature of education. I agree with W.B. Yeats when he writes, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” Education must, ultimately, concern itself with imbuing in the student the ability to think, a goal unfulfilled through standardization. In this manner, education resembles a fire rather than a pail in three important ways: its active process, its expansive nature, and its ability to enlighten.
A full education requires the student to actively engage with rather than passively accept the material taught to him. A pail indiscriminately, even unwillingly, admits information supplied to it. In contrast, a fire vigorously reacts to what it is fed, burning and decomposing an object before consuming and incorporating the item. Similarly, true education involves the student’s inquiry and analysis into the material. A teacher should desire to provoke and stimulate a child into engaging with information, much like the Socratic Method. However, the standardized system expects students to simply regurgitate what is placed in their “pails.” By misinterpreting the interactive characteristic of education, educators may be inducing its death.
Furthermore, unlike the effects of a pail, the effects of education are not limited to the individual alone. A pail is contained to itself only, but an educated man, like a fire, affects his surrounding area and evolves with it. If multiple flames come together and form a larger fire, the effect can even be as grand as the eighteenth century Age of Enlightenment, when scientific thought and intellectual ideas sprouted at unprecedented levels. If education is treated as a pail, however, the effects will have to be limited to the individual students alone as they study to test themselves on rather than discuss and analyze the material. By ignoring the expansive potential of education, we seem to have diminished its utility.
Finally, education resembles a fire because it enlightens rather than burdens. Many people have begun to doubt education’s role in modern society as the number of unemployed college graduates continues to increase. However, education is not inherently meant to be burdensome. A pail becomes heavier with the material it includes; however, a fire serves as a guiding light and allows the individual to view or reassess those things initially kept dark from him. Similarly, genuine education is not a heavy cargo of facts that must be memorized and kept; it is a guiding light that allows the individual to see the world in different ways and see aspects that were kept dark before. In this sense, an educated man is a liberated rather than a burdened man. For example, Frederick Douglass, a former slave, was able to become an influential abolitionist through the power of education. By educating himself, Douglass was able to see the truly heinous nature of slavery instead of the minced portrait fed to him by slave owners. If education is treated as a pail and a burden, as it is when students are forced to memorize large amounts of facts, this enlightening effect will dissipate.
All in all, the education crisis today seems to arise from a misunderstanding of the true nature of education. Education is not the standardized pail it has become today; it requires active participation, involves extensive effect, and enlightens its beneficiaries. By instead mandating students to remain passive learners, value testing over discussion, and memorize lists of information, educators have removed three fundamental aspects of education. One must remember that even a fire cannot exist in certain environments; without oxygen, a fire cannot start. The problems with the education system today seem to be concerned more with the current environment where learning is done rather than the general nature of learning itself. Legislative bodies and educators alike must focus on providing the many potential young fires with oxygen to breathe; by doing so, many of the problems will fix themselves.
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Genesis 9:6 New International Version (NIV)
6 “Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made mankind.
Genesis 9:6 : S Ge 4:14; S Jdg 9:24; S Mt 26:52
Genesis 9:6 : S Ge 1:26
Genesis 9:6 in all English translations
Leviticus 23Leviticus 25
Leviticus 24:17 New International Version (NIV)
17 “‘Anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death.
Leviticus 24:17 : ver 21; Ge 9:6; S Ex 21:12; Dt 27:24
Leviticus 24:17 in all English translations
Ecclesiastes 3:3 New International Version (NIV)
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
Ecclesiastes 3:3 : S Dt 5:17
Ecclesiastes 3:3 in all English translations
Jeremiah 40:15 New International Version (NIV)
15 Then Johanan son of Kareah said privately to Gedaliah in Mizpah, “Let me go and kill Ishmael son of Nethaniah, and no one will know it. Why should he take your life and cause all the Jews who are gathered around you to be scattered and the remnant of Judah to perish?”
Jeremiah 40:15 : S ver 8
Jeremiah 40:15 : S Dt 5:17; Mt 5:21-22
Jeremiah 40:15 : S Ge 11:4; S Lev 26:33; Mt 26:31; Jn 11:52; Jas 1:1
Jeremiah 40:15 : S 2Ki 21:14; S Isa 1:9; Ro 11:5
Jeremiah 40:15 in all English translations
3 Ishmael also killed all the men of Judah who were with Gedaliah at Mizpah, as well as the Babylonian[a] soldiers who were there.
Jeremiah 41:3 Or Chaldean
Jeremiah 41:3 in all English translations
Matthew 5:21-22 New International Version (NIV)
21 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder,[a] and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister[b][c] will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’[d] is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
Matthew 5:21 Exodus 20:13
Matthew 5:22 The Greek word for brother or sister (adelphos) refers here to a fellow disciple, whether man or woman; also in verse 23.
Matthew 5:22 Some manuscripts brother or sister without cause
Matthew 5:22 An Aramaic term of contempt
Matthew 5:21 : 5:25, 26pp — Lk 12:58, 59
Matthew 5:21 : Ex 20:13; 21:12; Dt 5:17
Matthew 5:22 : Ecc 7:9; 1Co 13:5; Eph 4:26; Jas 1:19, 20
Matthew 5:22 : 1Jn 3:15
Matthew 5:22 : Mt 26:59; Jn 11:47; Ac 5:21, 27, 34, 41; 6:12
Matthew 5:22 : Mt 18:9; Mk 9:43, 48; Lk 16:24; Jas 3:6
Matthew 18Matthew 20
Matthew 19:19 New International Version (NIV)
19 honor your father and mother,’[a] and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]”
Matthew 19:19 Exodus 20:12-16; Deut. 5:16-20
Matthew 19:19 Lev. 19:18
Matthew 19:19 : Ex 20:12-16; Dt 5:16-20
Matthew 19:19 : Lev 19:18; S Mt 5:43
Matthew 19:19 in all English translations
Mark 9Mark 11
Mark 10:19 New International Version (NIV)
19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’[a]”
Mark 10:19 Exodus 20:12-16; Deut. 5:16-20
Mark 10:19 : Ex 20:12-16; Dt 5:16-20
Mark 10:19 in all English translations
Luke 18:20 New International Version (NIV)
20 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’[a]”
Luke 18:20 Exodus 20:12-16; Deut. 5:16-20
Luke 18:20 : Ex 20:12-16; Dt 5:16-20; Ro 13:9
Romans 12Romans 14
Romans 13:9 New International Version (NIV)
9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,”[a] and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[b]
Romans 13:9 Exodus 20:13-15,17; Deut. 5:17-19,21
Romans 13:9 Lev. 19:18
Romans 13:9 : Ex 20:13-15, 17; Dt 5:17-19, 21
Romans 13:9 : Mt 7:12
Romans 13:9 : Lev 19:18; S Mt 5:43
Romans 13:9 in all English translations
James 1James 3
James 2:11 New International Version (NIV)
11 For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,”[a] also said, “You shall not murder.”[b] If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.
James 2:11 Exodus 20:14; Deut. 5:18
James 2:11 : Ex 20:14; Dt 5:18
James 2:11 in all English translations
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The new world order and China’s role in it
Attila Marjan
Thirty years ago China’s share of world trade hovered below 1% but has increased more than tenfold since. Every year since the turn of the millennium, China has provided a quarter of the international economy’s annual growth.
China’s entering the mainstream of the global economy was symbolically completed when it became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. This added 800 million workers to the international labor force. China is now the biggest market and the biggest economy in the world. The West’s economy and political elite are forced to ride the shock waves caused by China’s rise. Western retailers source most of their stock from China. Millions of blue-collar workers have lost their jobs in the West as production is relocated to the Far East, and China’s huge untapped rural labor reserve will not run out in the coming decade. The entry of China and India into the global labor market reduced the global capital to labor ratio by 55 to 60%. This is the single most important ratio explaining the phenomenon we call globalization. The development of Chinese capitalism is fundamentally different from the previous British or American models though, where the technological innovations of their own inventors fuelled progress. China, on the other hand, imported ready-made solutions from the more developed parts of the world. China is also becoming an international financial power. It has become the leading holder of US Treasury debt and thus is now officially the American government’s largest foreign creditor. China has also accumulated the largest foreign currency reserves in the world.
In 1820, China and India combined accounted for about half of the world output, while Europe only accounted for 24% and the US only 2% (!). China only exported, the West – primarily Britain, the hegemonic power of the 19th century – imported. A huge global trade imbalance was accumulated to China’s advantage and China held an incredible amount of British silver. Today’s situation is surprisingly similar. In the 19th century this led to the opium wars and to the end of the once mighty Chinese empire. In 1978 China accounted for less than 1% of global GDP. What the West sees now is indeed the re-emergence of China in an incredibly fast way.
China’s middle class is expanding at an unheard of speed, and its wealthy few are becoming the wealthy many. Chinese society is undergoing rapid transformation, which alters people’s self-identity as well. A poll published by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs[1] already in 2007 indicated that the Chinese believed that, in ten years’ time, their country will be just as powerful and influential in the world as the United States. At the same time the majority of Americans, Chinese, Indians and South Koreans polled were of the opinion that China would pull ahead of the US in the global race. Clearly China is no longer just an economic power but also a political force to be reckoned with, often flexing its muscles to further increase American unease.
The turn of the new millennium saw the emergence of new centers of gravity, often in the form of non-centralized conglomerates of states with large differences among them and without a single political will. The most important such center of gravity is South-East Asia, which has a growing influence on the global economy and world politics. With the boom in the Chinese economy, the slow but steady recovery of Japan’s economy, the reinvigoration of the “small tigers” and the strengthening regional roles of India and Australia, South and East Asia looks set to become the key focal point of the next world order. But with that role and power comes increased responsibility, in particular for the region’s leading country: China. Issues that have been considered domestic in nature — such as setting the yuan’s exchange rate, the efficient organization of the textile industry, health care reforms, better and more transparent governance or curbing corruption — will have a direct global impact.
As Asia rises, so does the West’s economic, demographic, political and military significance erode. The days of the global rules and institutions established by the West are numbered. Most Chinese researchers, politicians and even the man in the street are convinced that, things will soon be back to normal as China is becoming the world’s biggest economy just as it had always been until the beginning of the 19th century. (As late as the 18th century, China was the world’s largest trading nation, conducting one third of global trade, with India as runner up boasting one sixth of global trade.)
By 2015 the era of G7/G8 – in other words: the era of absolute Western domination with US hegemony – is over. The 21st century will refashion the global political order as well as the global financial world. The hegemony of the dollar — just as of the USA — will come to an end. International institutions need to be reformed. It is just absurd for Belgium to have greater voting weight in the International Monetary Fund than India. At the moment international organizations are functioning inefficiently and are on the decline, which is not surprising, as they are institutions of the post-war West-centered world.[2] We are living in an era of G20 but this seems only an interim solution. The question is what world order follows? Suggestions are plenty.
There is Robert Haass’s vision of a non-polar world order[3], more precisely a non-polar disorder, which is inevitably unstable in the long run. G3 is more of a Chinese idea. It is a multiple variable geometry in which different G3 setups can be envisaged (China, USA, Russia; China, EU, USA; China, Japan, USA) according to the needs of and relevance to the issue in question. G2 (a Sino-American tandem) seems for the time-being to be a weird animal to the Chinese. In 2009, some began talking about a G2 in the model of the G7, G8 or G20 and envisioned an Obama-Hu Jintao duo deciding the fate of the world. China was abashed by that talk of a G2 and was quick to deny any speculations about a bipolar USA-China world order. China has at least two problems with the G2 setup: for the time-being, it does not want to expose itself as a real global power nor wants it to be drawn too close to the US.
Chinese politicians and scholars treat the West’s loss of influence as granted, but there are people in China who worry about the possibility of America’s rapid decline. The more realistic observers in Beijing believe that America’s collapse (no matter how realistic this is anyway) would have disastrous implications, because China is not yet ready to build an alternative world order. Hence the objective should be to compel the USA to show more willingness to cooperate rather than bring it down.
“The rise of China is granted by nature. In the last 2,000 years China has enjoyed superpower status several times…China’s decline is a historical mistake which should be corrected” — the political scientist Yuan Xuetong wrote[4] in the Journal of Contemporary China in 2001, the year when the image of the USA’s invincibility was shattered. “Isn’t it possible that China, like all rising powers of the past, including the United States, wants to reshape the international system to suit its own purposes, commensurate with its new power?” Robert Kagan asked four years later in the pages of the Washington Post.[5]
China is preparing itself, trying to identify the weaknesses and strengths of its rivals. Its vast administration, including the army and intelligence services, is busy calculating, analyzing, generating strategies, and suggesting dos and don’ts for China’s rise. Meanwhile, the Chinese economy is growing at breakneck speed and beginning to reshape the global market. Chinese foreign policy has restricted its attention to local, or at most regional affairs, but the isolationist, policy of the nineties is inappropriate in the 21st century. It is unclear whether China’s true character is soft power or hard power. They have been undecided for centuries, even though China has been involved in wars or armed conflicts with almost all of its neighbors. Chinese political leaders seem to be uncertain at this point how to define the future role of China in the emerging world order. It is indeed a major problem for the West that it does not see where China is headed; but it is even a bigger problem for the whole world that China itself does not know either. Having said this China is reinforcing its global security focus. Chinese President Xi Jinping already announced the setting up of the Chinese National Security Commission (CNSC). The CNSC has three major tasks.
– To advise the Politburo (which oversees the Communist Party) and the highest levels of the leadership on security strategy.
-To coordinate between different departments throughout the party, the government, the military, and society.
– To conduct crisis management and risk management, for both internal and external security threats.
In July 2015, the Chinese government passed a new national security law that will strengthen its role in China’s national security policy.[6] The Chinese Security Commission decided to establish high-level communication mechanisms with the US National Security Council as security issues between China and the US already affect the entire globe, and especially the Asia-Pacific region. The hotline proposed by China between the Chinese National Security Commission and the U.S. National Security Council is meant to handle emergency situations.
The transformation of the international order, the end of a hegemonic system, the appearance of a new power has often brought disaster in history. The only exception to this rule was the changeover of power between the British Empire and the United States in the 20th century, but this was a special case for two reasons. Firstly, the two nations were closely related culturally (in the broadest sense); secondly, that changeover happened during global wars in which the two Anglo-Saxon powers fought side by side. The map of the world is being redrawn again at the beginning of the 21st century. In a Huntingtonian world the birth of a new world order and the emergence of new global powers inevitably lead to a crisis or a global conflict. Zakaria and Khanna, two well-known analysts of current times are less pessimistic,[7] they talk about a world coming to terms with a natural multipolarity by the emergence of the second and the third world.
On a historical scale, America’s rise to global power status was extremely quick: on the eve of World War II the US Army was smaller than that of the Dutch but by 1944 America’s military output was double that of the Axis powers. The USA climbed to the top of the world with unprecedented speed and stayed there for a short century. In 2000 the United States was the strongest power in history, whose global supremacy was uncontested. Its budget showed a healthy surplus, its military might was unparalleled, its economic clout colossal. However, since 2001 the US’s global position weakened. There is a lot of discussion about the end of the US supremacy and also on why has America’s global dominance come to an end and how China found its way up? One obvious explanation is the dynamics of history: it is simply impossible to stop the emergence of new powers. If a civilization, culture, country or region can improve the efficiency of its economy, if it can put human, technological and financial resources at work in a massive way, and if the external environment is favorable, it will become successful. If this happens in a big enough country, it will become a world power. Another explanation is the mistakes committed by the United States: its misguided energy policy, its immensely expensive wars have not produced any tangible results but have emptied the federal coffers, eroded America’s international image and gave China the chance to build up its economy, diplomacy and military almost unnoticed by the hegemon. In the meantime the US economy has become dependent on China (and vice versa for that matter): what China produced the USA bought, and as a result China now holds trillions of dollars in US government bonds. The arrival of the turning point has been accelerated by the profound demographic and economic changes, the pace of globalization, 9/11, America’s military failures and the economic crisis. As the Japanese prime minister said at the end of an international summit in late 2008: “History teaches us that crises create new order.” The shift of geopolitical power towards Asia coincides with the end of a golden age of the West, which brought rapid growth, low inflation and considerable improvements in the standard of living, as well as with an economic crisis unseen in 60 years.
The American intelligence community[8] predicted a fundamental reshuffle of the world as we know it in the next few decades already a decade ago. The international order, as it was created in the wake of World War II, will be unrecognizable by 2025 — they say, adding that the pace at which wealth and political power will move from West to East is unprecedented in modern history. The world will become ever more dangerous, but richer at the same time, which does not mean that the majority of the Earth’s population will not face food and water shortages. Today’s oil powers may become tomorrow’s beggars, while developing countries and regions that build their economies on hard work will see stunning growth. The rise of the non-Western world, which began in the 1950s with Japan and continued in the ’60s with the Asian tigers, became a full-blown trend with the emergence of China, India and Brazil and will continue for decades.
It remains to be seen whether China’s rise will happen peacefully in the long run. The West is instinctively wary of geopolitical changes and knows also that dictatorships do not last long. Still, China needs peace in the world to be able to strengthen its economy, annex Taiwan at some stage and build an international order in which Asia and China play a central role. For the time being, China is not aiming at global hegemony or confrontation. Since the mid-nineties, China has been claiming to be a responsible, peaceful and cooperative partner of the West. A confrontation with America is unlikely to pay any dividends and is therefore not a realistic option. However it is encoded into Chinese culture that everything must have a counterbalance. A power without a counterbalance is unnatural and dangerous. Power must be balanced internationally without encroaching upon the independence or sovereignty of nation states. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the Chinese hoped that the Cold War era would be replaced by a multipolar world order, and were disappointed to see the dawn of total American hegemony. China was shocked by the US intervention in Kosovo in 1999; bilateral relations were all but frozen, and China was afraid that the USA would use Taiwan and Japan to keep China at bay. This was the general view held by Chinese politicians and defense analysts at the turn of the millenium. But the world has changed immensely since then. Niall Ferguson talked about the end of Chimerica[9] – a marriage between the US and China in a completely intertwined economy where America consumes and China produces, China lends, America borrows, China exports, America imports. This cooperation was obviously a pretty problematic one therefore did not last for long. Both USA and China maintain strong suspicions of each other’s intentions. Accordingly, both sides are hedging their bets and securing their positions should relations deteriorate. As long as the question of Taiwan is not resolved peacefully and definitively, hostility between China and the USA remains a realistic risk. Nonetheless, as long as the USA does not pose a threat to its vital national interests, China is willing to tolerate the current global framework but with an ever-growing determination to gradually change it from inside.
According to Kissinger, the United States must be aware of its supremacy but act as if global security depended on all global actors. This strategy can divide the psychological burden of responsibility and will allow the principles of freedom and democracy to dominate international politics. In other words: share power to hold on to power. Kissinger believes that China, with four thousand years of history behind it, must know something about survival, hence the West should avoid being condescending. Kissinger is convinced that China’s rise will be the greatest challenge to the West as well as to China itself. Its political mentality, institutional culture and traditions do not predestine the US to accept easily the loss of its status as the world’s number one power and become one of many global actors. Also, for the US multilateralism has a different meaning and importance than to European countries and the EU. For America multilateralism is the means of achieving its end of a stable world order with the USA as the leading power. For Europe multilateralism is the end itself.
Having said all this, in 2015 US’s global military superiority is still beyond question. The US Navy commands a fleet bigger than the next 50 largest fleets together; America spends over a billion dollars a day on defense. The US economy is world leader not only in term of output but also in the use of cutting-edge technology. America’s intellectual and cultural impact — from Harvard through Hollywood to McDonald’s — is the biggest soft power in the world. Not to mention the fact that the USA is not a status quo power, America is not afraid of change. Apart from its unwavering faith in democracy and in its own specialness, its embrace of change is one of its key distinguishing features.[10]
The rise and reinforced international profile of China and Asia poses some inconvenient but crucial questions for the West. As Asia rises and Europe stagnates, an overhaul of international organizations naturally seems inevitable, however difficult that may be. The French president suggested that India should be given a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, but when the possibility of the EU being given a single seat on the Security Council (instead of the two currently held by France and the United Kingdom), he called it very unlikely that the EU — which has trouble agreeing on much less contentious issues — could find consensus on such a sensitive and crucial question.
What guaranteed the prosperity of the West, apart from its military might, was that the world order that emerged in the wake of World War II was shaped by Western ideas, rules and values. Global politics undergo seismic shifts the global order is realigned and the global value set might also be rearranged to a certain extent. This latter is much less talked about but equally important – in the long run, certainly. We are witnessing not only the competition of economies and military capabilities but of values as well. And what we experience is a new phenomenon: the rise of alternative values and institutions in the world in parallel with a certain level of democracy fatigue even in the West.
In parallel with the global power reshuffle new social models are appearing. These new societal models are not hybrids combining elements of Western society. They tend to be forms of state capitalism or non-liberal (pseudo) democracies, where elections are held regularly but a populist elite rules the country nonetheless. Many developing countries go through this stage in their development; the question is whether they will be able to move on and turn themselves into real democracies. At the same time Western liberal democracy shows signs of ageing and becoming rickety as cowardly political elites motivated only by polls discredit democracy altogether. Postmodern politics is drifting towards dim-witted media politics.
Does China’s rise really mean that the universal expansion of the Western world and of liberal democracy have come to a halt? When China broke with dogmatic communism and opened itself up to the world, it spent three decades adopting Western principles, particularly in the areas of foreign and economic policy. China is opening a new chapter: it wants to create a new model of its own, which can become an alternative to the Western model and will surely be popular in all countries that have a dislike for the American dominated Western world order. When the “Chinese model” crystallizes it can offer the developing world (Africa, Latin America and the Middle East) an alternative to the Western liberal model. The new China does not only rebuff the West-dominated present, it also rejects eurocentric historiography and the eurocentric worldview as false and distorted, because — it claims — these advocate the global supremacy of Greco-Roman culture and underplay the world’s oldest culture (i.e. that of China).
The fact that autocracy and state capitalism seem to prevail and flourish in the biggest country in the world is a powerful signal for many countries. There are speculations that the global system might soon have a viable Third Way (as opposed to the Western and the clear cut third world dictatorship models) which could be a desirable option for many Asian and African countries in the 21st century. It is not a certainty though. But if democracy is challenged by a strong and vivid alternative model on the global scale, remilitarization and old-school power politics could come back into fashion. China will have a responsibility as regards how to tackle these developments and their consequences in the long run.
Francis Fukuyama asks[11] in 2010 whether liberal democratic principles are really universal or have been revealed not to be. His answer is that they are universal – but this is not as sure as it was a decade ago. He asks what the democratic world can do with Putin’s transformation of Russia into an ”electoral authoritarian” state, the undermining of democratic institutions by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and the rise of China as a successful authoritarian modernizer. Are these systems true and viable alternatives of old-fashioned democracy? They are most probably not in the long run, but liberal democracy is not the only alternative to all-out dictatorship in worldwide politics anymore. As he puts it: “The next phase of global history will be a challenging one, as America and Europe stumble to get back their economic balance. It seems doubtful that either the US or Britain will achieve the degree of growth in the next generation that they did in the previous one. But one of the great advantages of democracy is that it does not depend for its legitimacy on continuing high levels of economic growth, as the Chinese system does. As we move forward, it is important to keep in mind the simple power of the idea of a government by, for, and of the people. We need to match those high ideals with unglamorous but steady investments in institution-building if liberal democracy is to deliver on its promises.”
Robert Kagan says that ideology still matters in geopolitics, and one should add perception as well to ideology. China’s strength comes partly from the fact that the world sees it as strong, the future great power. At the same time, part of America’s weakness stems from the fact that it sees itself as a declining power[12]. A change in these perceptions could cause significant shifts in times of uncertainty and global transition. Is China potentially an even bigger a power than we imagine or – as Ari Van Assche puts it – does the West only make a dragon out of a dragonfly[13]?
China is changing geopolitics, surely. Is China going to change the rules of the game? It is doubtful, but this is still a puzzle to the Chinese themselves. China might as well be much less powerful as it seems, based on a shaky “Leninist corporatism” whose development is completely based on stealing know-how and institutions from the West as Will Hutton points out.[14] But there is a high probability that reality will prove otherwise.
[1]Chicago Council on Global Affairs: World Public opinion, 2007.
[2]Zhao Kejin concludes that “today it seems that EU states are taking a case-by-case approach toward China’s initiatives to constructively reform the Bretton Woods system. They tend to support reform of the international monetary order, thus accepting RMB’s inclusion in the SDR, yet they are not committed to sharing governance of the old institutions, as this would limit European influence and prestige.” In: China’s National Security Commission. Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. July 14, 2015.
[3]Robert N. Haass: The age of non-polarity – What will follow US dominance. Foreign Affairs. May/June, 2008.
[4]Yan Xuetong: The rise of China in the Chinese eyes, Journal of Contemporary China, 2001, Vol. 10.
[5]Kagan, Robert: The Illusion of managing China. Washington Post, 15 May 2005,.
[6]Kejin, Zhao: China’s National Security Commission. Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. July 14, 2015.
[7]See more in Khanna, Parag: The second world – empires and influence in the new global order. Random House, New York, 2008. and in: Zakaria, Fareed: The post-American world. W. W. Norton & Co, New York, 2008.
[8]According to the Global Trends 2025 report.
[9]Ferguson, Niall – Schularick, Moritz: “Chimerica and global asset markets”. 2007. and “The end of Chimerica”. 2009. Harvard Business School. Working Paper 10-037.
[10]A small note: things in the balance of the international order can change unnoticed and sometimes scholars and politicians got carried away by perceptions of visible trends while obviously disregarding the ones less obvious. One good example is the surprise at the collapse of the Soviet Union. In his book (My Country, My People) published in the US in 1935 Lin Yutang described China as a tired old man (in comparison with the dynamic, youthful West.) Some seventy years later my book on the future of Europe bore the subtitle: “The Old Lady and the Bull” (a reference to ancient Greek mythology) describing Europe as an old lady instead of the young girl who she used to be when she had been taken by Zeus disguised as a bull. Probably both of us were right at a certain moment in time, but the lifespan of truths in geopolitics seems to get shorter and shorter.
[11]Is the Age of Democracy Over? Spectator. February 10, 2010.
[12]An example: According to a 2009 survey by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, 81% of Chinese think the USA will stay ahead of China in innovation, while 41% of Americans think so. (in Newsweek, 28 November 2009.)
[13]Van Assche, Ari: Are We Making a Dragon out of a Dragonfly? – Understanding China’s Role in Global Production Networks. Burgundy Report, CIRANO Network, 2009RB – 03. January 2009.
[14]Hutton, Will: The Writing on the Wall: Why We Must Embrace China as a Partner or Face it as an Enemy. Free Press/Little, Brown.
Related Topics:AsiaPacificChinaEconomicsGeopoliticsUSA
Problems of Japan
China Ready to Gulp in South China Sea
Hungarian economist, PhD in international relations. Based in Brussels for fourteen years as diplomat and member of EU commissioners’ cabinets. Two times visiting fellow of Wilson Center in Washington DC. University professor and author of books on EU affairs and geopolitics. Head of department, National University of Public Administration, Budapest.
Pak-US Relations: The Way Forward
Dickson Yeo
At the basement floor of the Chinese National museum in Beijing, there’s a curated collection of China’s imperial history from antiquity to the fall of the Qing Dynasty. The basement is where a multitude of visitors from around the country gather, entry is free for foreigners. At the end of the collection, is a British “waist sword” presented to Emperor Qianlong in 1793 by the London expedition, as a symbol of friendship. According to the archives, during a court etiquette kerfuffle a young British boy stepped forward and resolved it with his plucky antics, the Emperor gifted a scented pouch to the child.
The British child became a lifelong learner of Chinese court etiquette, culture and language. A predecessor to the thousands of “China Hands” plying their trade in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing from the 1990s onwards. In 1839, the British Parliament enraged by the Chinese incineration of Opium stocks and the Chinese court’s refusal of “free-trade” based on narcotics smuggling, debated on a military reprisal. The young child had become a distinguished statesman and became the prime supporter of a naval strike. He stated that a nation that coerced others to kneel in their presence, would grow accustomed to kneeling in the presence of their superiors. This hawkish Lord, the son of the original Secretary of the British Mission in 1793 (Sir George Staunton), was the plucky child who had neutralized the initial diplomatic embarrassment. The British sword is placed at the end of the gallery, in a massive national museum at the heart of Beijing. Five millennia of immense material progress and near suicidal collapses, human frailties merged with ingenuity. And at the end of the imperial age, a colonial sword hangs in the balance.
The primal lesson that China learned from its disastrous encounter with modernity, was to criminalize all forms of narcotics and adopt Victorian rectitude against leisure. China has had two disastrous encounters with synthetic drugs, between the fall of the Han Dynasty and the establishment of the Sui when large volumes of the elite became addicted to a mineral hallucinogen and its Century of Humiliation during the 19th Century. Most Western observers consistently italicize the latter, by extension disputing this version of history that the Communist Party purports, as a form of self-victimization that the state narrates to itself as an excuse for “expansionism”. But the proof lies in the other former colonial territories in Asia, Hong Kong and Guangzhou boomed when the East India Company (EIC) secured favorable trade terms, the British possessions in India and South East Asia, became narcotics production and repackaging centers to satisfy the China market. “Bukit Chandu” in Singapore literally translates into “the hill for storing packaged opium” right beside the mega-port’s historical Telok Blangah district. The Qing Dynasty smuggled correspondence to London in the hope of appealing to Queen Victoria’s morality on the opium epidemic, only to be intercepted by Lord Melbourne and erased from memory.
But the British Empire is history, its sins expunged. Not exactly, the second historical lesson that modern China learned was the Western self-belief in exceptionalism; it’s habitual for Washington and the EU to utilize moral language in the service of their ends. Washington inherited Britain’s global empire through the Atlantic Charter and utilized moral metaphors for its global causes since 1945. The Cold War, the neo-liberal rollout in the 1990s, the War on Terror, all these utilized universalist values in the service of American corporates, security aims and commodities expansion. Since the 1980s, American political scientists and anthropologists have globally preached against the sins of otherization. But unironically, the rollout continues. The modern resurgence of a Post-Capitalist China that organically merged Maoism with corporatized industrialism, is considered an abomination that the post-Fukuyama American elite finds abhorrent. Having proven incapable of neutralizing Islamic terrorism, the internal decline of the American economy and its multifaceted problems must be blamed on an “other”. It is heretical that the Chinese state, the most exoticized possession subjected to almost two centuries of evangelization and persuasion, is out competing the colonial metropoles. There is growing realization in the US elite that the military industrial complex in the US is exhausting national resources and over-extending American power at a point where domestic needs are being over-looked. There is a massive community of lobbyists, academics, columnists and politicians gearing up for a “civilizational clash” with Beijing and profiting from it. To the extent that ideological nemesis like the Charles Koch and George Soros can find common ground and establish a diplomacy-focused institute to counter the American blood lust.
But there is no American decline, the NYSE and NASDAQ are posting record highs and employment continues to spike. The abovementioned are just instances of bad Chinese propaganda. The Trump tax cuts have energized corporate performance since 2017 and real-estate speculation has revived across the US. This is the classic bubble model of economic expansion that the US system has relied upon since Reaganomics in the 1980s. But the signs of decay are numerous, the American elite is not acting on a position of strength against Beijing. Infrastructure decrepitude, education and income inequality are at their worst since the 1920s. The public trust in electoral officials erodes daily from the latest Trump scandal while the frequently touted calls to reindustrialize America are not actualizing. The American middle class continues to be squeezed by high personal debt and the rapid vaporization of industrial employment. Reagan’s America triumphed against Moscow while riding on an economic high in 1989,Trump’s America buys most of its iPhones from Beijing because Tim Cook still can’t find enough industrial engineers to redo designs at a moment’s notice.
Both Beijing and Washington are rushing to embrace 5G technology to gain dominance over the heart of development in the next decade. You can see the signs in America where there is a general reluctance to discuss anti-Trust action against Google, Facebook and Amazon because they collectively form the best chance against China’s BAT consortium on a global scale. AI and industrialization are globalized technologies that rely on layers of legal specialization, patents and distributed supply chains. These are classic outcomes of the neo-liberal world that Washington wanted since 1991. But the crux lies in the fact that the US has to enjoy market dominance over these fields, or else. The prospect of impoverished peasants building multinational corporates that out-compete is abhorrent. The possibility that the Friedman/Hayek consensus of turbo-charged laissez faire, is less efficient that industrial policy and greasy Chinese engineers who don’t fully open their markets cannot be countenanced. As mentioned in previous articles, the US targeted Tokyo and Seoul respectively in 1985 and 1998 under similar circumstances. But the Chinese example is simply too massive for the US to contemplate, an entire middle class larger than the US national population that is partially denied to Wall Street or Silicon Valley. And therein history returns to haunt, substitute opium for social media, what do you get?
Why do you think the Chinese placed that sword at the end of a national gallery?
Giancarlo Elia Valori
As a political decision maker, the Chinese Minister of Natural Resources, Lu Hao, is at the centre of a great transformation of today’s China.
Former Governor of Heilongjiang from 2013 to 2018, he was also First secretary of the Communist Youth League and later vice-mayor of Beijing.
He is also a full member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), although he was born only in 1967, in Shanghai or probably in Xi’an.
The effective political systems favour and foster the careers of the best young people.
As President Xi Jinping has often pointed out, this is the right time for a comprehensive and in-depth ecological analysis of Chinese development.
Once the economic development of a country that initially hosted the “second processing activities” of global economy was over, China is now getting ready to be a large global economy, an advanced economy having no obligations towards “old” technologies and markets – hence also fully ecological.
Since the 18thCPC Congress, President Xi Jinping has been vigorously supporting the idea of a fully Chinese “ecological civilization” and certainly the choice of Lu Hao as Minister of Natural Resources goes in this direction.
As both President Xi and Minister Lu Hao underline, now also soil erosion has become a very severe phenomenon in China.
Currently the annual soil erosion of both agricultural and non-agricultural land totals approximately 5 billion tons.
The area currently down to agriculture in China is worth about a third of the available land.
The desertification area is now equal to 2,622,000 square kilometres, i.e. 27.3% of all the land surface available.
Despite the many efforts made to reverse this trend – and not only recently -currently China is the country with the lowest per capita share of forests in the world.
Pollution is still heavy, especially in the case of water, but President Xi (and Minister Lu Hao) have quickly got to work.
President Xi Jinping stated: “Clean waters and green mountains are as valuable as mountains of gold and silver”.
The President not only wants a high GDP, but above all a strong and stable “green” GDP.
The First World markets pollute the Second but, above all, the Third World – and today China is not Third World for anyone.
Being subject to pollution is like being subject to foreign powers.
Hence President Hi Jinping’s fundamental idea is that protecting the environment and increasing productivity are mutually reinforcing goals.
Just like Minister Lu Hao, President Xi Jinping believes that there is a scientific and rational connection between environmental protection and economic development and that the purpose of the CPC action is to enhance the people’s quality of life and their happiness index.
Hence President Xi Jinping’s fundamental idea is to strictly follow the scientific and technological criteria, by increasing the use of natural resources and – precisely for this reason – also developing the blue economy, while respecting the objective laws of nature and, hence, also the laws of socialist and rational economic development.
At the 18th CPC Congress, President Xi Jinping – and certainly also Minister Lu Hao – spoke of building a “beautiful China”.
As written in the documents of the 18th CPC Congress, “To meet the people’s desire for a better life is our mission” – hence President Xi Jinping (and Minister Lu Hao) maintain that “building an ecological society and civilization, which is connected to the people’s well-being, is our goal and the true future for the Chinese nation”.
President Xi Jinping’s policy line is – first and foremost – to “first protect, then scientifically demarcate the use and protection of nature, and later adhere to the red line of environmental and ecological protection”.
Here the primary concept is “protection first”.
The old industrialist and productivist criterion, whereby “merely keeping pollution under control” is enough, is now meaningless.
Therefore, whoever is in charge of the area where pollution has occurred must be considered – to all intents and purposes – liable both legally and practically.
We know that every year at least eight million tons of plastic are thrown into the oceans, and over half of this quantity comes from five Asian countries: China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
This problem can be slowly solved with better collection, wider information and what President Xi Jinping precisely calls “ecological civilization”.
Furthermore, as early as 2017 China has begun its “action against air pollution, with the closure of over 150 coal-fired steel factories to reduce particulate matter in the air by at least 15% a year.
Again as from 2017, China has already achieved the 2020 target for the use of solar energy, with the even more ambitious goal of soon reaching the production level of 213 GW, five times higher than the current US annual production.
Considering the current technology data, it is like covering – only with solar panels – a surface larger than the Greater London area, namely 1,500 square kilometres.
Furthermore, also thanks to Minister Lu Hao’s action, in 2019 China rose from the 41stto the 33rd place in the world list of nations that are actively involved in climate change.
A great leap forward, although the greenhouse gas emissions increased in China both in 2017 and in 2019.
China, however, can currently meet the Paris Agreement criteria by stopping its greenhouse gas emissions within 2030, but only by increasing its renewable energy production by 20% and by using greater nuclear energy sources – a policy of which little is still said in the silly West.
Hence tripling the share of non-fossil fuels by the end of 2030 and establish a full market for Chinese emission trading.
If – as is very likely thanks to President Xi Jinping and Minister Lu Hao – China manages to do so, the global project to reduce the global temperature increase to “much less” than two degrees Celsius will be successful.
China is therefore fundamental for the ecology of the whole planet.
Moreover, China plans to increase the area of forests absorbing carbon dioxide by 45,000 square kilometres and it is slowly succeeding in reaching this goal, also thanks to the organization of natural parks, considering that China currently has over 12,000 perfectly organized natural parks and reserves.
There is a public health problem adding to the challenges outlined so far.
In China about 2.8 million children -mainly newborn babies – die due to pollution-related problems.
If we do not want to change the balance between generations – and certainly President Xi Jinping and Minsiter Lu Hao are very careful not to do so – the pollution issue becomes pivotal.
Just think about the retirement, employment and demographic transition between generations, with a burden of newborns’ deaths equal to 2.8 million a year.
The Chinese Climate and Ecological Policy System introduced in 2017, which Minister Lu Hao is greatly expanding, also provides for the careful monitoring of over 1,700 energy-producing companies and for the further final control of over three billion tons of greenhouse gases.
The size of China is still an outstanding issue and has led the country to have – in spite of everything – as many as 10 billion tons of CO2 released into the environment – about a quarter of the world total amount.
In any case, however, they are less than 23% compared to the Chinese CO2 production in the previous year.
As to water pollution, the State will spend as much as 30 billion for “cleaning” and purifying springs and water flows.
China will also improve its basic price system, with a view to fostering environmental protection and rural areas – a policy for the total cleaning of urban water and major springs, organized by Minister Lu Hao and supported by President Xi Jinping.
The first goal is to purify urban waste water, the major source of stable pollution of springs. Then China plans to “ecologizing” the Yangtze River and Lake Bohai, two other water flows that affect China’s whole rural and urban water system.
The project, however, will be completed and the cleaning of the big rivers and major water basins and reservoirs will go ahead.
There is a project to reduce the use of industrial water by 23% within 2020, when the first large national share of renewable energy will be massively used in China.
The law on the “prevention of soil and water pollution” entered into force on January 1, 2019, but it also provides for the census-taking of all Chinese land – to be carried out every ten years – as well as the establishment of monitoring stations everywhere – with data that can be spread at every level – and also the checking of toxic and noxious substances in soils and waters, with data that must become public – at least partially. It finally provides for the creation of funds for cleaning land and water, which every local and regional authority must envisage in the budget.
“Rehabilitation systems” for polluting agricultural or industrial companies are planned.
With specific reference to the desalination of sea water for industrial and human use, it should immediately be noted that China is one of the 13 countries with the lowest water availability in the world.
Moreover, most water resources are concentrated in the South, while Northern and Western regions tend to suffer from drought.
As President Xi Jinping and Minister Lu Hao point out, population growth, mass urbanization, climate change and gradual reduction of water reserves are all conditions that make the water issue crucial for continuing China’s economic development.
In addition to reorganizing national water reserves – as can be seen in projects such as the Diversion of Northern Waters – water is never really sufficient and, hence, the other fundamental issue of President Xi Jinping’s and Minister Lu Hao’s water scheme is desalination and the recycling-purification of waste water.
Here the real problem is desalination, considering that 43% of the Chinese population lives in the 11 coastal provinces, which anyway account for 13.7% of the Chinese territory.
In coastal areas, however, the water supply is even lower than the national average.
Nevertheless, coastal areas account for over 65% of China’s national GDP.
However, the water resources of China’s coastal areas are only about 28% of the total national ones.
Hence desalination is a solution.
Currently over 150 countries use this system.
Moreover, China’s desalination project has lasted for at least 60 years.
Currently, however, after a series of regional and sectoral attempts, a real desalination industry has developed in the Hebei Province, as early as the first project in Datang Wangtang in 2005.
The specific membrane technology is already well- developed, but also microfiltration is available – with a national production exceeding 10,000 square metres per day for each of the approximately 150 plants, but with additional 71 sea desalination plants, operating at a reduced pace, and with 35% of the total water resources used for people’s personal use.
Only 35% of water resources, however, is used for energy production and for other industrial uses, including paper and metal production.
The desalination plants are mainly located in four regions, namely Zhejiang, Shandong, Liaoning and Hainan.
The main technologies are Reverse Osmosis (RO) with UF (Ultra Filtration) membranes and Multi-Effect Distillation (MED), which is thermal desalination.
In China, 120 are RO plants and 7 are the largest ones with MED technology.
With regard to soil protection, it has been ascertained that 402 industrial sites and 1,401 agricultural areas record a high concentration of heavy metals.
36% of agricultural areas and 28% of industrial sites are contaminated.
China defined the regulations carefully and made them even stricter in 2016, but the final regulatory framework was designed in August 2018.
As already seen, the criterion used is prevention.
The relevant authorities must therefore evaluate each project ecologically, before its implementation.
The law lays down each party’s responsibility, with a sequence of obligations no one can escape.
However, the real problem in China is the relationship between arable land and urban areas.
New buildings have reduced the area down to agriculture by almost 60% compared to 1990.
2.47 million hectares – equivalent to the surface of the US State of Vermont – were reclaimed on the basis of the new legislation on the rebalancing between agricultural land and housing areas.
Nevertheless, only 37% of the land reclaimed on the basis of this legislation is reused for agricultural purposes, while 44% remains merely unploughed land and 19% becomes forests.
Moreover, the climate and bio-chemical change of soils is often at the basis of China’s great internal migrations, which are a further structural distortion of an already anomalous – and now stable-concentration of people from internal towards coastal areas.
According to the 2016 data, the Four Modernizations and the subsequent reforms pushed over 200 million migrants to the Chinese coasts.
In the future, however, the real core of the issue for China will be harvesting electric power from the dynamics of ocean wave movements.
Many energy market analysts believe that the market for this type of electricity will increase by 10.25% a year until 2023.
The market is expanding especially in Europe, which was the first continent to develop this technology, but now the idea has spread to the United States, Australia and, above all,China.
Currently there is a device available for harnessing the power of ocean waves known as “Penguin”, which is moored to the seabed at 50 metres depth. Only 2 meters are visible above the sea water surface.
This 1,600 ton device is around 30 m long.
It is manufactured by a Finnish company.
Devices for producing wave-based energy -with an average capacity of 40 MW – are already available in the Caribbean, Antigua, Bermuda and Curaçao, through a mechanism that will be operational in late 2019.
Nowadays also the microgrid technology is available, i.e. a mix of energy sources, users and storage systems that, in this case, combines solar sources with those from the ocean wave cycle, as currently happens off the Australian coast.
Today the energy available from waves, and hence from tides, is 8.2 GW for the whole China.
It is a huge amount.
China’s research for this type of technology is currently based on a vertical turbine, developed by the Harbin University, as well as on a horizontal axis turbine, studied by the University of Zhejiang, and on other prototypes.
Hence the potential energy available from the Chinese wave cycle is probably much greater than expected – by over 25% – and this does not regard the technologies currently applied, but the physical potential of wave movements, which can be easily calculated.
As early as the 1970s China has developed this sector, starting from Jangxia (3900 Kw), and later in the regions of Bachimen, Shandong and Maluan Bay, which are already active only partly.
There have also been attempts – far from useless – to produce energy from the sea heat exchanges.
But what are the structural limits of the Chinese marine renewable energy project?
In general terms, a certain and stable lack of investment in the sector, which enables Western technologies to evolve more rapidly and, above all, more suitably for the future massive consumption of “sea wave-based” energy.
We also need to consider the nature of places on the Chinese coast, with the spreading of typhoons and dangerous situations, and finally the use of oceans for security, desalination or fishing operations.
Still today, a massive spreading of these wave-based energy technologies is needed, as well as a common base between universities, government, local authorities, Party and users to create a strong and stable market for this type of energy.
The Inertial Sea Wave Energy Converter (ISWEC) could be the solution.
It is a device placed inside a float, with an operating criterion based on an inertial system to exploit the sea wave movements to produce energy.
The stability of the float and of the device is ensured by a gyroscopic inertial system, which works when the hull oscillations caused by the movement of waves induce the rotation of the gyroscope platform that is then converted into electricity by the power generator.
The additional aspect is that this system can be fine-tuned and adapted to the changes in sea conditions, which allows to relate the frequency of maximum productivity to the frequency of the incident wave.
Everything is regulated by the spin engine of the gyroscope flywheel and by the real-time dataon the area’s weather conditions.
You can also easily secure the system, if special sea conditions or other phenomena occur.
The hull of the float has dimensions of 8 m width, 15 m length and 4.5 m height, as well as a draft of 4 metres.
The two gyroscopes inside the “buoy”, i.e. the floating positioning system, have an installed electric power of 130 kW, as well as a sensor platform capable of immediately collecting data from the local sensors, to be related to the remote sensor data and the updated weather forecasts.
They can also predict the wave characteristics and finally generate the short-term control signal for all the device operations and drives.
The average annual productivity per each floating position system is 250 MWh, which allows to save 68 tons of CO2 emissions each year, and the structure will obviously occupy a sea area of approximately 150 square metres where fishing will be forbidden.
The device is the result of research carried out by the Polytechnic of Turin, developed by a spin off and put into operation thanks to an agreement between ENI, CDP, Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, Fincantieri and Terna.
As Arthur Rimbaud wrote in one of his poems, “Eternity.
It is the sea mingled with the sun.”
The Belt and Road Initiative: Towards a New World Order
President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping and President of the United States Donald Trump met on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Osaka on June 29 to discuss the resumption of trade and economic talks between the two countries. The United States also promised that it would not introduce additional tariffs on Chinese goods. The world collectively breathed a sigh of relief, as the trade war between the world’s two largest economies is fraught with serious risks for global economic growth.
Time will tell whether these agreements will turn out to be the calm before the storm or whether the two sides will be able to find mutually acceptable solutions. However, no matter how the events that broke out between the United States and China in 2018–2019 occurred, the economic war gives us grounds to say that we have become witnesses to yet another manifestation of the gradual disintegration of the existing world order. This process is gaining momentum and directly affects almost every area of intergovernmental relations.
In these circumstances, we are witnessing the ever-increasing efforts of leading states, either by themselves or with other countries, to promote various integration mechanisms that would satisfy their immediate interests and at the same time create a platform for their participation in shaping the future world order. The biggest and most ambitious of these projects is, of course, the Belt and Road Initiative put forward by President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping in the autumn of 2013.
Without dwelling on the multitudinous interpretations of the Belt and Road Initiative, I will take the liberty of highlighting the international significance of this initiative. Let us recall that President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping first put the idea forward when the established world order was only just beginning to show signs of its obvious failures. The global economy struggled to overcome the effects of the global financial crisis in 2008–2009. In the Middle East, the seemingly unshakable authoritarian Arab regimes started to fall one after another. The “reset” of the Russian-American relations was spluttering, and a serious conflict was brewing around Ukraine. In short, the international system had entered a period of increased instability marked by reduced manageability at the global and regional levels.
No less obvious was the fact that the deepening disagreements between the two great powers and the emerging fragmentation of the international system made it practically impossible to reach any kind of common agreement on restructuring the decaying world order. For example, the repeated attempts to reform the United Nations invariably fell flat. By the same token, it was impossible to even start a serious discussion about revising the rules of the game on the global financial markets following the crisis in 2008–2009. Arms control mechanisms have also stalled noticeably.
In this context, the Belt and Road Initiative should not be viewed as an exclusively economic project (or perhaps not even as an economic project at all), but rather as an attempt to find an alternative approach to reformatting the world order. Not “from above,” that is, through the radical transformation of the old and the creation of new global governance institutions, but rather “from below,” through the consistent implementation of specific regional and continental projects envisaging the most diverse and flexible formats for getting potential participants involved. It is no coincidence that President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping has declared that the Belt and Road Initiative was intended to put his country’s idea of creating a community of common destiny for humankind into practice.
The Chinese initiative did not encroach on the fundamental principles of the liberal world order in any way. On the contrary, when delivering his keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in early 2017, President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping stressed Beijing’s commitment to continuing the process of globalization and protecting the freedom of global trade from the looming protectionism.
Despite the cautious wording and the ostentatious flexibility and openness of the Chinese initiative, it nevertheless raised a great deal of suspicion. And these suspicions were voiced not only in the United States, but also in Europe, India and partly in Russia. Political leaders and corporate leaders across the globe felt that it was about more than just the implementation of a single, albeit extremely ambitious project, but rather about the onset of the reformatting of the entire world order. Sensing a threat to their interests and their positions in the world, some countries set out to boycott the Belt and Road Initiative, block the geographical expansion of the project and create a negative reputation surrounding it.
Such an obstructive approach appears counter-productive, primarily for those planning to boycott and sabotage the project. In the six years since the Belt and Road Initiative was launched, not a single significant alternative project has been put forward. What is more, over the years, the old Transpacific and Transatlantic integration projects have been shelved.
It is obvious that sabotage is not a constructive response to the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative. Rather, a constructive response would be for other countries to develop their own projects, with the worthiest rising to the top. For example, Beijing’s far-reaching plans should push the European Union to finally move forward with concrete integration initiatives after years of fruitless discussions. On the other hand, critics and skeptics of the Belt and Road Initiative should become more involved in the project itself in order to lay down the rules of international cooperation together with China.
President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin welcomed the Belt and Road Initiative and noted that “combining the potentials of such integration formats as the Eurasian Economic Union, the Belt and Road Initiative, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations could become the basis for a greater Eurasian partnership.”
Russia needs to clearly define its long-term priorities and interests within the project, taking its real possibilities and limitations into account, and then implement it together with China and the other participants in a coordinated manner. This task is far more complicated that any national project. But it is also far more important than any national project being implemented today.
Naturally, the foundation of the emerging new world order cannot be limited to the Belt and Road Initiative. This is just one example of the formats in which the new world order will develop. The main principle of building a new world order “from the bottom up” is the creation of regional and continental “coalitions of likeminded states” – states that share common approaches to various measures of international interaction. The Belt and Road Initiative meets these criteria, as do the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union and many other entities. Maybe something will come of the resurgent Russia–China–India triangle.
Countries will find it easier to protect their own interests as part of flexible and fluid coalitions dealing with specific issues. On the other hand, these “blocs” may later form the basis of the future world order. This process will, by definition, be slow and unequal, but there is simply no other realistic way of overcoming the current crisis of how to control the global system.
From our partner RIAC
Cooperation and Trust is the only way forward for Pakistan –US relations. Both countries have wasted a huge time experienced...
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When elders are criminals……
20-year-old student, Marisol Valles Garcia, made police chief of one of Mexico’s most violent towns
A Mexican border town ravaged by the drug war has a new police chief – a 20-year-old woman who was the only person brave enough to take the job. Marisol Valles Garcia, who is studying for a criminology degree, was sworn in Wednesday as the top cop in Praxedis Guadalupe Guerrero, a township of 8,500.
“She was the only person to accept the position,” an official at the mayor’s office said. Two drug gangs, the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels, have been battling for control of the town’s single highway. Police officers and a former mayor have been killed.
Valles, who has a baby son, says that intimidate her. “We’re all afraid in Mexico now. We can’t let fear beat us,” she said after being sworn in. She is in charge of 12 police officers and wants them to go door to door, looking for the criminal element – which murdered eight people just last week.
Valles will be confronting narco-gangsters who have terrorized much of the country with their depraved acts of violence. In the latest outrage, police found a woman’s head in a bag next to a body left on the street in Ciudad Juarez, officials said Wednesday.
Three decapitated bodies were hung by their feet off bridges in Tijuana last week. The cartels’ brutality has some fearing for Valles. “Let’s hope it is not a reckless act on her part,” said Miguel Sarre, a Mexican professor who specializes in law enforcement.
Twenty year old criminology student, Marisol Valles, stands outside of her office in the northern Mexican border town of Praxedis G. Guerrero municipality in Chihuahua State.
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The Braille Monitor, April 2001 Edition
Sacramento Bee Takes Hard
Look at Problems Facing the Blind
Paul Carver
�� From the Editor: On January 28 and 29, 2001, a Sacramento Bee staff writer, Melanie Payne, published a total of five articles, each on some aspect of the complex of problems facing today's blind citizens. Although she focused on California and its statistics, what she said holds pretty much true across the country. Many of the people she interviewed were Federationists. Here are the articles as they appeared:
Setting Sights on Good Jobs:
Fighting Stereotypes, Rejection,
All in Day's Work for the Blind
by Melanie Payne
�����January 28Linda O'Neal, Brenda Sanden, and Paul Carver can swap horror stories about finding a job. All three are college-educated, experienced, and qualified, in some cases overqualified, for the work they were seeking.
��� Their complaints vary. Some employers held them to higher standards than their other employees. Other employers looked at them for jobs that required only remedial skills. And some outright refused to interview them. But O'Neal, Sanden, and Carver do have one other thing in common. All three are blind.
Linda O'Neal was laid off from her last job as a relay operator at Sprint about four years ago. The relay operators act as intermediaries between deaf and hearing callers. Some 300 of those operators lost their jobs when Sprint lost the California relay contract to a lower bidder.
����Within months most of the relay operators O'Neal knew had been re‑employed, including some to other positions in Sprint. It was easy for many of the relay operators to find new jobs. The economy was booming, and relay operators were smart, quick typists with good communication skills. But unlike O'Neal they weren't blind.
�����O'Neal said she expected it would take awhile for her to find a job. "But I didn't expect it to take two years." She credits her Department of Rehabilitation counselor with helping her finally land a job as a customer service representative at the California State Automobile Association.
�����Although relieved to find a job, O'Neal missed her previous work. As a relay operator she used a Braille display to read the information typed in by a deaf person and then would type in the hearing person's response. It was fun and different every day. She was familiar with the technology. She was confident and comfortable in the job.
����The new job was much different. O'Neal was frustrated by the technology, the difficulty of learning a new job, and a horrific commute.
����"There were a couple of times during the first year that it seemed like it was way too much," O'Neal said. "There were a couple of times I almost gave up. Had there been another job, I would have given up." O'Neal learned to use the Windows‑based software (which is hard for blind people because it is based more on graphics than text) and now enjoys the job. But her transportation problems persist. O'Neal and her guide dog Miranda commute from their Natomas apartment to Rancho Cordova by bus, light rail, and foot. If she makes great time, she gets there in an hour and twenty minutes. On a bad day the trip can be two-and-a-half hours long. O'Neal said, when she got her first job, she felt as if she had to prove herself. Work harder than anyone else because she was blind. Prove to her employer that he should have hired her.
����Even now she feels some guilt about her situation. She is grateful in a way most employees are not over the adaptive equipment her company had to purchase so that she could do her customer-service job.
����"The employer is expected to purchase any adaptive software or adaptive equipment," O'Neal said. "That to me is wrong. That employer shouldn't be expected to [provide the blind employee anything special]."
����When she was looking for a job, several companies told her that it was going to cost too much money to hire her, O'Neal said. "We can't afford that in our budget," she was told. That's why now, O'Neal explained, "I feel beholden in a sense, that they gave me a chance."
���� Davis resident Brenda Sanden has worked as a contract specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service for the past eight years.
����For years before that, however, Sanden was underemployed despite an undergraduate degree from Amherst College in Massachusetts and a law degree from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Sanden had wanted to be an employment law attorney "because I had been so frustrated myself." But Sanden's problems were not just discrimination. Despite a good education Sanden lacked two skills blind people need to get employedshe didn't know Braille, and she couldn't travel independently. Because Sanden's blindness was caused by juvenile macular degeneration, which can be a gradual deterioration of eyesight, she was encouraged as a child to use her residual sight. As a result she said, "I learned to hide my blindness." She used magnifiers and large print to read and didn't learn Braille.
�����She stayed in the same community growing up and going to college, so she learned to get around without using a cane because the environment was familiar to her. Both things changed as she got older. Her vision deteriorated, and she left Amherst. "I didn't realize how poor my vision was until I left my community," Sanden lamented, where she "had learned the layout ... so well." "I was afraid," Sanden said. She realized she had never been on her own; there had always been a family member or friend who guided her around.
����"I realized it wasn't cool to go to a job interview with someone leading you up to the employer's door," she said. When she couldn't find a job, she went on disability and found the experience "demeaning, degrading, and boring," she said. "It affects your self‑esteem." So she went to work doing the only job she could find, booking reservations for the Marriott Hotel chain, where she worked for two years. But the work wasn't challenging, and the job was a dead end, she said.
��� Sanden went to school to learn cane travel so she could become independently mobile. She also learned Braille, and although she's not great at it, she can use it for filing, making notes for herself, and keeping things organized. Sanden also decided to take the civil service test and see if she could get a job with the federal government. She reasoned that with a high enough score they would have to hire her.
��� She scored in the eightieth percentile. It qualified her for a job, but that was only part of the battle. She had to get into a department that would get her an assistant who could read for her. People also questioned her ability to do the job. "When I first was hired, there was a lot of resistance. People couldn't understand how a visually impaired or blind person could do contracting," she said. As a result she's tried to work harder and smarter. And, over the years, she's had to defend her work to skeptical co‑workers and supervisors. "I've had to prove myself harder than anyone else," she said.
�� Paul Carver just wanted the chance to prove himself. The forty‑year‑old Rancho Cordova resident has been working with computers since the early 1980s. And now he assembles them, distinguishing the various components through touch. The pins allow him to tell the difference between a network card and a video card. The other components are just as easy to differentiate, except for the keyboard port and the mouse port. They're the only ones that give him trouble, except on a Compaq, where there is a small, raised picture of each over the port. Carver can feel it.
���He laughs a bit sarcastically when asked if he thought they did that to make it easier for people who couldn't see. It's the only time the affable Carver gives any indication of being jaded. There are prejudice and misconceptions about blindness, Carver said. "When a blind person walks into an interview...blindness colors the perception of what that person can do."
���When Carver, a computer engineer, was looking for a job, he registered with employment agencies. One called him back with an interview for a job. He'd never been to the agency. "Blind" doesn't appear on his resume. The guy from the agency offered to drive him to the interview so they could meet and talk. Carver agreed. When the day for the interview came, Carver stood in front of his house waiting for his ride. He heard a car go by slowly, pass him, and turn around. It came back again and stopped in front of the house. Carver walked to the door, got into the car, and introduced himself.
��� The man wouldn't start the car and drive away. "Isn't the interview in fifteen minutes," Carver asked him. The man answered him by stating the obvious: "You're blind." Carver said they spent the next forty-five minutes sitting at the curb in front of his house. The man told Carver he should have told him he was blind. "If I had told you, would you be sitting here now?" Carver asked. He answered, "No." Carver, angry, went back into his house. The next day he called the agency and told the man that he could come to his house so that he could demonstrate the technology he used and how he could do a job. And if he didn't agree to at least come and see, Carver would sue him.
��� The man showed up, and Carver spent an hour with him. The next day he called with a job interview. But Carver didn't need it; he'd already found another job. Carver has been working as an information systems analyst for the Office of Emergency Services Disaster Assistance Division for five years now. When he went to his job interview, he was escorted through a labyrinth‑like office building. Months later, when he was talking to the man that hired him, he thanked him for "giving (him) the opportunity to do the job." According to Carver, his boss said, "Well, the thing that clinched it for me was that you were the only one who interviewed for the job who could find the way out of the building without assistance." "I found that amusing," Carver said.
Nancy Burns
Special Agency for Blind Sought: Advocacy Groups Fault Rehabilitation Department
���� January 28It was a historic moment. One night early this year over wine and Chinese food, members of the National Federation of the Blind of California and the members of the California Council of the Blind set aside some thirty years of bickering to come together for a cause.
��� They, along with other advocacy groups for the blind, have formed the Blindness Alliance for Rehabilitation Change. The alliance is going up against what they say is a multimillion dollar bureaucracythe Department of Rehabilitation.
���� The alliance says the best way to serve the state's estimated 600,000 blind and visually impaired people is to stop lumping them in with other disabled people. Instead they recommend establishing a Commission for the Blind, an agency specifically designed to meet the needs of the blind.
����Alliance members say that about 70 percent of working age blind people are out of work despite the booming economy and the estimated $25 million a year that the Department of Rehabilitation spends on services for the blind. California's unemployment rate now hovers at about 3.2 percent.
����The Department of Rehabilitation's mission is to assist those with all types of disabilities in gaining employment and becoming independent. Critics say that, because the department isn't focused on the needs of the blind, it doesn't adequately help the blind.
��� The thirty-eight-year-old department "clearly isn't established for blind people," said Nancy Burns, president of the National Federation of the Blind of California and former counselor for the Department of Rehabilitation.
���"There are special needs and training that a blind person needs to be independent," Burns said. But the department doesn't understand that," she said, "and it isn't giving people the skills they need to be able to work."
��� Erin Treadwell, a department spokeswoman, said the department had no position on the commission and declined to comment on it.
��� The department's director, Catherine Campisi, who moved into the position last year, was unavailable to comment because of a busy schedule, Treadwell said. Treadwell did, however, elaborate on the changes under way at the Department of Rehabilitation to address some of the blind community's concerns.
����In the last six months, Treadwell said, the department hired a new deputy director of specialized service, who will oversee services to the blind and deaf. It is also reinstituting a requirement that counselors for the blind and deaf exhibit additional competency in order to serve blind and deaf clients.
���The department, which has been understaffed, has launched a nationwide search for qualified rehabilitation counselors, Treadwell added. Critics contend, however, that this is too little, too late.
��� Nationwide, an estimated 70 percent of blind people of working age are without jobs, a figure that has remained unchanged despite record low unemployment levels for the sighted population, according to statistics from the National [American] Foundation for the Blind.
����� In fiscal 1999-2000 the Department of Rehabilitation placed in jobs roughly 323 people who were blind or visually impaired, including nineteen who were self-employed. Ten people in the Sacramento district got jobs with the assistance of the Department of Rehabilitation.
Bryan Bashin
��� Bryan Bashin, executive director for the Society for the Blind in Sacramento, is harshly critical of the job the Department of Rehabilitation is doing to help the blind find jobs.
��� "California really lags behind," Bashin said. "If you live in Texas and you're blind, you have seven times the chance of getting a job than if you live in California." Bashin recognizes that the department has begun to change. Still, he said, the system needs "a fundamental, structural rebuilding."
�����The unemployment rate for the blind and what activists see as the failure of the department to address adequately the situation has galvanized support for a separate Commission for the Blind. The Department of Rehabilitation has "six layers of bureaucracy" between the rehabilitation counselor and the director, said Gil Johnson, director of the National Employment Program for the American Foundation for the Blind.
�����By its own admission the Department of Rehabilitation is spending an estimated $25 million annually on services for the blind. It successfully meets the rehabilitation goals for 1,240 of the roughly 4,900 clients who use its services each year. Of those 1,240, about 300 are placed in jobs.
�� The department's total budget is $444 million. It spends about $316 million on vocational rehabilitation. According to Johnson the department has seventy rehabilitation counselors that work with blind clients. Half of those counselors provide job services; the others work with clients on independent living skills.
���� That means an average of four to five blind people were placed in employment by each of the department's seventy counselors last year, Johnson said. The national average, he said, is fifteen. In addition the average salary of a person placed in a job through the Department of Rehabilitation is $350 a week.
�� Oregon illustrates the flexibility of a commission for the blind over an all-encompassing Department of Rehabilitation. The fifty-five-staff-member commission for the blind placed 114 blind people in jobs last year, with an average weekly salary of $423. The blind population in Oregon numbers about 70,000about one-tenth California's number of blind and severely visually impaired. But the Oregon Commission for the Blind placed in jobs one-third as many as were placed by the Department of Rehabilitation.
���� Frank Synoground, assistant director of rehabilitation services for the Oregon Commission for the Blind and a former California resident, said that the commission is "more consumer-driven" than a rehabilitation agency that serves all disabilities. Four of the seven commission board members are blind, he said. The administrator of the agency serves "at the pleasure of the board," he said, rather than as a political appointee.
����Yet some critics say a small organization wouldn't be practical in a state like California because it would duplicate $25 million in administrative services that are already done by the Department of Rehabilitation.
��� Even if that's true, commission supporters argue, employed blind people would more than make up for the money. There are more than 100,000 blind people of working age in the state who aren't paying taxes and are collecting welfare, disability payments, and other forms of public assistance, said Bashin, who estimates those programs cost taxpayers $10,000 a year per person.
�����Dan Kysor, director of governmental affairs for the California Council of the Blind, is supporting a bill that would set up a nine-member commissionincluding at least five blind or visually impaired membersfor the blind in California. He's enlisted the support of state Senator John Burton, who introduced SB 105, a bill to establish a Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Burton said the Department of Rehabilitation "grossly under-utilized" the services of California's thirty community agencies that serve the blind.
��� �Although Kysor said he expects the majority of legislators to support the bill, he expects resistance to come from the governor's office. A spokesman for the governor had no comment on the commission bill since it was submitted only recently and hadn't been reviewed yet.
Opening Work Door:
Blind Must Overcome Prejudice, Lack of Skills
��� January 29Because of society's negative perception of blind people's abilities and because many blind people lack skills they need to worksuch as independent mobility and Braille literacyabout 70 percent of blind people of working age nationally are jobless, said Bryan Bashin, executive director of the Society for the Blind in Sacramento. That compares to an overall unemployment rate of about 3.2 percent in California.
���� As a group the blind are solid citizens, Bashin said. Many are well educated, commit few crimes, and indulge in little substance abuse, he said.
�����Employers are crying for this type of worker, he saidexcept, it seems, when they are blind. Many employers won't give blind workers a chance, Bashin said. They don't believe that a blind person can do the work. But often the problem is with the blind themselves, who lack the necessary work skills because they never received proper training.
����Brenda Sanden, a Davis woman who is blind, didn't learn Braille or travel skills until she was an adult. "I had great parents," Sanden said. "But they were too protective." As a result, she said, when she became an adult, "I didn't have confidence."
Priscilla Ching
�����Castro Valley resident Priscilla Ching said that young blind people often lack role models and don't know that an independent life is available to them. "I didn't know successful blind people," Ching said. Ching, who became blind at fourteen, was encouraged to rely on what she described as "unreliable" residual vision. She didn't learn to use a cane. She also didn't learn Braille.
����The mobility issue, however, was a particular problem for the independent minded woman. She had to be led around, a situation she didn't like, but she didn't know she had a choice, she said.
���� That was until she went to the University of California, Davis, where she befriended another blind student who used the long white cane. She saw how her friend was independent and liberated. Ching decided to attend the Louisiana Center for the Blind, where she learned both Braille and cane travel. She went on to earn a master's degree in educational psychology with an emphasis in orientation and mobility.
�����And she excelled at both. After completing cane-travel instruction, Ching traveled by herself to Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. She recently returned from a solo trip to Vancouver, British Columbia. At the end of January she'll head to the East Coast, traveling to Washington, D.C., and Boston.
��"Having good travel skills sets you free," Ching said. "It (the cane) allows you to do what you want to do when you want to do it." Many people like Sanden and Ching don't learn these skills as children, Bashin said. And it can severely affect their ability to get a job in adulthood.
��� Braille literacy is one of the best correlations with employment, Bashin said. Although Braille literacy among the blind is about 10 percent, the Braille literacy rate is 93 percent among blind people who are employed.
����Braille is a code of raised dots that allows the blind to read by touch. Invented in the early nineteenth century, Braille was slow to catch on. But by the 1950s, the rate of Braille literacy among the blind was around 60 percent. Then, in the 1960s, the culture changed. Braille was thought to be clunky and slow. Tape recorders and recorded speech‑‑books on tape and talking computers‑‑were the future.
�� "Mechanical speech meant the death of Braille," Bashin said, even though mechanical speech is inappropriate for many tasks. Hearing is not the same as reading, even when the reading is done with the fingers instead of the eyes.
�� Try, for instance, following a recipe after only hearing the directions. What about hearing a mathematical formula? Or a list of inventory items? But speech replaced Braille first in recordings and then with computers, and the Braille literacy rate dropped to where it is today, around 10 percent.
����Mechanical speech wasn't the only thing that killed Braille, said Nancy Burns, president of the National Federation of the Blind of California. The educational policies of the 1960s and 1970s also hurt. It used to be that blind people were sent away to residential schools, where they learned "daily living skills," how to get around independently and live as a blind person, in addition to academic subjects, Burns said.
����And, most important, they learned to read Braille. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, the movement began to keep blind children in their communities. Although this kept children with their families, which was a good thing, she said, they didn't get good training in Braille and travel skills in public schools.
�� For one thing there weren't enough teachers who specialized in teaching skills to the blind. If a school had only two or three blind children, the school couldn't have a full-time instructor for them, so the job was turned over to itinerant teachers.
�� That's still the way it's done today, she said. In Victorville, for example, the instructor who teaches Braille to blind children is there only two hours a week. The result is illiterate young adults, Burns said. They can't go to work, she said, because they can't read and write.
High‑Tech Devices Ease Adaptation
����January 29Technology has made it possible for blind people to do all kinds of work. By using optical equipment that raises images on paper and software that reads e‑mail messages aloud, the blind can serve as call center operators, computer programmers, attorneys, and even astrophysicists. However, that hasn't translated to more of the 600,000 blind people in California finding employment. "With technology, we thought we would see a great upsurge in employment for blind people," said Catherine Skivers, president of the California Council of the Blind. Instead, she said, many employers either don't know the technology exists or don't want to believe it can be used by blind people to be effective on the job. Kent Cullers, who is blind, is director of research and development for the SETI Institute in Mountainview. SETI, which is an acronym for "search for extraterrestrial intelligence," was formerly a NASA program and is now a private company. It's most famous for the project that listens for radio signals from space that may be deliberate or inadvertent transmissions from other planets.
���Cullers, who is in his early fifties, describes himself as a "child of high tech." He has always tried to be at the forefront of using technology for the blind. He used an Optacon camera that scanned a page and produced the image with raised pins, allowing a blind person to feel what a photo or text looked like. "I proofed my Ph.D. thesis on a gadget like that, one letter at a time," Cullers said.
��� Since then the technology has advanced and has made it much easier for blind people to interact with the sighted world. Humanware, a company located in Loomis, produces and sells state‑of‑the‑art adaptive equipment for the blind. Al Puzzuoli, a blind employee at Humanware who is a specialist in products for the blind, found a number of items to assist him in his sales job. One was software that read off his e‑mail messages in a synthesized voice. Puzzuoli listened to them at the rate of 500 words per minuteabout five times faster than average speech and incomprehensible to all but the blind people in the room.
����"I have speech going at a pretty good rate," Puzzuoli said, explaining that through practice most blind people can discern speech at a faster rate. It's really a necessity, Puzzuoli said, since speech is slower than reading. Puzzuoli used another item to scan his mail. He could then choose to have it read aloud to him, again at a 500‑word speed. Other items at Puzzuoli's disposal were Braille writers that allowed him to type text into a computer and then print it out in Braille to proofread or to send off to a blind person.
����In most jobs, "with the right adaptive equipment," said Humanware President Jim Halliday, "a blind person could be as productive" as a sighted person. The problem, Halliday said, is to get the employer over the initial reluctance to hire a blind person. Some employers don't know how far the adaptive equipment has come. Sometimes they fear that it will be too expensive. Some equipment is very costly. A Braille display, for example, may cost $10,000. But the employee may be able to get by with a speech display, which is $1,000. "You're selling the employer not on the technology," Halliday said, "but on the blind person being able to do the job."
�� Some blind people were doing their jobs before computer technology and many of the advances in adaptive equipment became available. Ralph Black, for instance, is one. Black, the general counsel for the chancellor's office of the California Community Colleges, started working as an attorney there in 1980. Adaptive equipment, Black said, "has certainly made my job easier." But more than that, he said, it has allowed him to stay competitive and "operate in the same environment everyone else is operating in." His employer has been quite generous in providing equipment, Black said.
���He has a scanner that allows him to scan and read documents and a Braille printer to produce Braille documents for meetings. He has a small notetaker that uses speech and Braille output. And his computer has speech output and a Braille display. Some blind people worry that employers will be reluctant to hire them because they might assume the Americans with Disabilities Act will obligate them to provide expensive adaptive equipment. But that is not the case, said Erin Treadwell, spokeswoman for the Department of Rehabilitation.
���The "expertise is out there" to design a way for employees to do jobs with sometimes very inexpensive adaptive equipment, Treadwell said. She admitted the ADA has scared away some employers who fear that hiring a blind person opens them up to lawsuits and "special treatment." But the cost of adaptive technology shouldn't be used against blind people, Treadwell said.
�� "All of those concerns can be addressed, removed, or mitigated," Treadwell said. "It's just having an employer with the guts to give it a try."
Vending Job Program Draws Chorus of Critics
��� January 29More than sixty-five years after it was approved by Congress, the federal act that established a program to recruit and train the blind to operate vending services in government buildings is coming under attack.
��� Critics have argued that the Business Enterprise Program makes a few vendors wealthy while others scrape by and that it spends too much money to benefit too few blind people.
����According to the American Foundation for the Blind, the state Department of Rehabilitation spent about $8 million to $10 million in the last fiscal year on the program. The money goes toward recruiting and training vendors, helping them purchase inventory, and other administrative costs.
��� However, only nine new vendors were set up during that time, according to the American Foundation for the Blind. Seven vending locations closed. Others criticize the program as socialism for the blind. The BEP vendors own and operate snack stands, coffee bars, cafeterias, and vending machine operations throughout the state. The vendors aren't really independent, critics say, but operate under a paternalistic program, a relic from the days when blind people had to be taken care of.
�� Joni Patche, who is blind, used to be one of the naysayers. She had planned to be a college graduate and go on to a career as a translator. She remembers passing the blind vendors as she commuted on the subway in her hometown of Boston and feeling as if she could do better.
���Now Patche is one of the 155 vendors in California's BEP program. It's not welfare at all, Patche said. "It's hard work." No one would work this hard for welfare. Patche is at Joni's Java Junction, a snack bar and coffee shop located in the Department of Rehabilitation building in Sacramento, every weekday from 5:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m.
���Even on weekends, when the shop is closed, Patche comes in to check on things. She started in 1983 with $1,700 in inventory. She now has about $17,000 in inventory and several employees. Patche's husband Paul is also a BEP vendor with a snack bar in another state office building.
�� Patche operates through incredible organization, employing some sighted employees, and with the assistance of a consultant. The consultant helps her with displays and new ideas that might make her business more profitable.
����Employees will tell her if equipment needs to be cleaned or something is amiss. Customers also help out, Patche said, telling her if an employee "looks scruffy." But for the most part she's on her own, Patche said.
����"It's all-consuming," she said. "If I want to take a vacation, I have to find someone to work for me." The shops are profitable, but it's not quite enough to meet the Patches' needs. They still receive disability payments that supplement the business income for the family of five.
�� That too, however, is a criticism of the program. Vendors don't have the incentive that regular business owners have to turn a profitthere's always supplemental disability from the government. But still many vendors need it. Among the state's 155 BEP vendors fourteen made in excess of $100,000 in profits last year. But fifty-three vendors made less than $20,000.
���Erin Treadwell, the spokeswoman for the state Department of Rehabilitation, said she's heard the criticisms, and in the past people have tried to revamp the program. But, she said, the minute that the department starts to tinker with the BEP program to make it more equitable or to make vendors more competitive, there's an uproar from the blind community.
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est. 1868: The story behind our Balmain dress
home > Otago Museum Blog > est. 1868: The story behind our Balmain dress
Posted 11 Mar 19 by Jane Malthus
“A garment made by Pierre Balmain was the very quintessence of haute couture,” according to Vogue editor Diana Vreeland.
The beautifully cut, red wool dress with heavily padded shoulders is rare in this part of the world. Made in 1948 by the renowned French couturier Pierre Balmain, several people and institutions played roles in the story of its presence in the Otago Museum collections.
Miss Avice Bowbyes, head of the Clothing Department at the then School of Home Science at the University of Otago, first set eyes on this dress when she attended the Pierre Balmain couture show of 17 August 1948. She described his collection of 120 garments thus: “… his silhouette is slender and close fitting, but with a sudden flare at the knee, particularly at the back of the skirt, usually described as his fishtail effect.”
Image: Dress designed by Pierre Balmain. Paris, 1948. Gift of the New Zealand Wool Board; Otago Museum Collection. G86.212. By Kane Fleury © Otago Museum.
This dress certainly encapsulates the look of that show. Miss Bowbyes was on a study leave in Europe and US that year and was lucky enough to receive entry to the Paris couture shows from the organising body of couture, La Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. She also went to shows at the houses of Jeanne Lanvin, Christian Dior, Jacques Fath, Robert Piguet, O’Rossen, and Worth.
In the late 1940s, the New Zealand Wool Board was making a collection of couture created from wool fabrics, to show New Zealanders that wool could be used to create fashionable, stylish outerwear and evening dresses. When Avice learnt that this red dress and two Robert Piguet designs had been purchased by the Wool Board, she approached Dr Lund, the chairman in London, to ask if the three garments could come to the School of Home Science when the Wool Board had finished with them. They were duly sent to the Wool Board representative in New Zealand marked “not for sale – to be given to the School of Home Science”.
There they were used as part of the teaching resources, illustrating the high standards of design and construction of the couture industry, techniques of which were taught in clothing courses. In the 1980s, when those courses were radically overhauled, these garments were passed onto Otago Museum so that they could continue to be seen and researched.
The designer of the red dress, Pierre Alexandre Claudius Balmain, was born in 1914. His father was a draper and his mother ran a fashion boutique with her sisters. Pierre studied architecture first, selling fashion drawings on the side. However, he left his studies and worked for the designer Edward Molyneux in the 1930s for five years, then for Lucien Lelong, alongside Christian Dior, during World War Two. He opened his own design house in 1945, when he showed long, bell-shaped skirts with small waists (like the 1947 “new look” but two years before).
Balmain created an international following by touring Australia in 1947 and successfully selling ready-to-wear in the US from 1951. He also designed for high-profile actors and royalty to keep his name in the public arena. In the 1950s he was counted among the “big three” French designers, with Christian Dior and Jacques Fath. Later in his career he designed Winter Olympic and airline uniforms, costumes for Broadway plays, and French and American films. His clothes were always sophisticated and elegant, and sometimes elaborately embroidered. Balmain’s chic and structured designs didn't appeal to the younger buyers of the 1960s, so his star waned. He died in 1982. The House of Balmain continues though, with designers such as Oscar de la Renta, Christophe Decarnin and currently, Olivier Rousteing.
On her return from her 1948 study leave, Miss Bowbyes was quoted as finding the “dreary monotony of women’s clothing” (NZ Free Lance, 5 June 1949, p4) in New Zealand overwhelming, which prompted many outraged responses, since this was still soon after World War Two. One from the New Zealand Garment Manufacturer’s Federation (NZGMF) tried to explain that the fault lay with the system of import licensing then in place. Import licenses were based on value, an amount of overseas funds, so manufacturers had to buy their supply of material within that amount. If they spent it all on expensive materials, like the red wool twill weave of the Balmain dress, they ended up with less yardage. A system of ceiling prices imposed by the “price control division” also operated and included a maximum expenditure on labour and trimmings which could be put into a garment. According to NZGMF, the policy “amounts to direct interference in fashion”.
Miss Bowbyes continued to receive invitations to Pierre Balmain shows and to receptions by the International Wool Secretariat, such as one held in 1964/5 in honour of wool in haute couture. She went back to Paris in 1955 to study couture dressmaking and tailoring techniques at the school attached to the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. When she retired from the University of Otago in 1961, she taught couture tailoring at the University of Guelph, Canada, and wrote a book on women’s tailoring called Suit Yourself.
The Balmain dress is currently on display in est. 1868, open daily in the Special Exhibitions Gallery, 10am to 5pm. Entry is free.
Thanks to Otago Museum, Hocken Archives and Vogue.
Top image: Dress designed by Pierre Balmain. Paris, 1948. Gift of the New Zealand Wool Board; Otago Museum Collection. G86.212. By Kane Fleury © Otago Museum.
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James Cameron - Challenging the Deep
home > Otago Museum Blog > James Cameron - Challenging the Deep
Posted 28 May 19
James Cameron – Challenging the Deep heading for Dunedin
In what is undoubtedly a significant coup for New Zealand, Otago Museum has secured exclusive New Zealand rights to host the blockbuster exhibition James Cameron – Challenging the Deep.
Developed by the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney in collaboration with the Avatar Alliance Foundation, James Cameron – Challenging the Deep takes visitors to the depths of our oceans through the lense of Cameron’s underwater cameras, and his other incredible technological innovations that have made it possible to explore some of the most mysterious parts of our planet.
Dr Ian Griffin, Otago Museum Director, says, “This year, we remember some truly significant exploration-related anniversaries – 250 years since James Cook’s first contact with tangata whenua, 50 years since the moon landing, Sir Edmund Hillary’s 100th birthday – as well as the Museum’s own 150th anniversary. With this in mind, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to inspire a whole new generation of explorers by bringing this world-class exhibition to Dunedin.
“Our city has been jumping off point for some great voyages of exploration – Dunedin was the port of departure for Scott, Shackleton, and Byrd. And, of course, we believe that Dunedin is itself an amazing place to explore. This immersive exhibition about a modern-day explorer presents a perfect opportunity for people from all over New Zealand to explore Dunedin.”
Kevin Sumption, Australian National Maritime Museum Director, says, “It was a delight for our creative team to have worked directly with James Cameron and the Avatar Alliance Foundation to build this exhibition, which has proved to be a tremendous success for the Australian National Maritime Museum. It is time to share it with the world, and we are thrilled that New Zealand, through our friends at Otago Museum, will be the first stop on what we hope will be a long and successful international tour of this spectacular exhibition.”
Cameron has had a lifelong fascination with the deep oceans. He has led eight major deep-sea expeditions and completed numerous submersible dives, setting world firsts including the first solo dive to the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the first exploration of the interior of the wreck of RMS Titanic, and the first seafloor-to-surface live broadcast.
Cameron’s expeditions, in collaboration with oceanographic and scientific institutions, have documented the shipwrecks of RMS Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck, explored deep ocean phenomena, such as black smoker hydrothermal vents, and discovered new species from the lowest point on earth. They have been chronicled in his documentaries and now, for the first time, in an exhibition.
James Cameron says, “It’s working with people, solving problems, having our machines work in the depths, where a critic’s whim means nothing, where only absolute laws of physics apply, that gives me deep satisfaction. Challenging the Deep allows me to bring people with me on some of my journeys of discovery.”
Otago Museum is partnering with NIWA, New Zealand’s largest provider of ocean science, to stage the exhibition. John Morgan, NIWA Chief Executive, says, “Our research takes us into the domain visualised so beautifully in this exhibition. It is exciting to see James Cameron shine a spotlight on this rarely seen, but hugely important, environment.”
The Otago Community Trust, Mediaworks and the Otago Daily Times have also committed their support to the project. These partnerships with some of New Zealand’s best-loved organisations will enable the public to experience some of the most innovative exhibition design to come to the city.
Otago Museum Exhibitions Designer Shanaya Allan and Facilities Officer Garry Gibson will be working closely with the original design team to fit the large-scale installation into the Museum’s Special Exhibitions gallery. Miss Allan says, “This is a very different style of exhibition to ones we’ve produced previously, and it’s really exciting to be working with an international team to bring it here.”
The Dunedin City Council is also supporting the exhibition through its Enterprise Dunedin and Community Development and Events teams, with family entertainment planned to support the opening.
Nick Dixon, DCC Group Manager Ara Toi, says, “Dunedin City Council is delighted to support Otago Museum in celebrating this important exhibition. Families and schools throughout Dunedin and Otago will enjoy this fascinating and entertaining insight into the science and drama of exploration, as will visitors to our city from across the country and overseas.”
Dr Griffin says, “Celebrating the life and work of one of the world’s most notable filmmakers, as well as an explorer, is also a nod to the healthy growth of the city’s screen sector. Residents of Dunedin and visitors to the city can expect to be immersed in all aspects of Cameron’s world, from the deepest oceans to his marine-focused movies.”
The exhibition opening will be marked with a gala event on Saturday 20 July and will be open to the public from Sunday 21 July, with a full day of public programmes in planning. It will remain open until mid-February when it departs for the next leg of its global tour.
About James Cameron – Challenging the Deep
Visitors enter the exhibition through a recreation of a MIR submersible to encounter a single immersive environment of cinema presentations, rare artefacts, and specimens from Cameron’s career as an active explorer and filmmaker.
The exhibition includes the technical innovations Cameron developed to make the pioneering underwater feature film The Abyss in 1988, including the unique diving helmet he wore during the shoot, alongside the original maquettes of the Pseudopod and the alien Manta Ship from this classic science-fiction feature film.
Visitors watch as Cameron explores the wreck of RMS Titanic on three expeditions and can see models, hand props and costumes from his blockbuster film Titanic. Highlights include the dress worn by Kate Winslet’s character Rose, the boarding outfit worn by Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Jack, the iconic “Heart of the Ocean” necklace, and Jack’s sketches, which were drawn by James Cameron himself.
Visitors vicariously accompany young scientists on some of their 43 dives with Cameron on his Aliens of the Deep Expedition to examine thriving deep ocean life, spectacular volcanic vents, and geology that unlocks the potential secrets of life on other planets. And, from Expedition Bismarck, they watch survivors of the battleship revisit the last resting place of their comrades and their giant warship.
Finally, visitors will voyage with Cameron to the deepest known point of the earth’s surface on his historic solo dive more than 10,000 metres down to the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench in the revolutionary Deepsea Challenger submersible Cameron designed and built in secret in Sydney and California.
The exhibition includes artefacts from the design development of the vessel, specimens collected on its expeditions, and the Explorers Club flag he took with him on the history-making solo voyage to the deepest part of the ocean.
James Cameron – Challenging the Deep
Special Exhibitions Gallery, Otago Museum
Open to the public from 10am, Sunday 21 July
Tickets: Adult $17.50, Concession $14, Child $9.50, Family $45
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Archbishop Wulfstan of...
Archbishop Wulfstan of York
Andrew Rabin
in British and Irish Literature
Published online February 2016 | | DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199846719-0075
British and Irish Literature
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199846719.001.0001
Oxford Bibliographies » home page
The writings of Archbishop Wulfstan of York (d. 1023) mark an artistic and conceptual highpoint of later Old English prose. As a homilist, he composed vibrant sermons characterized by vivid language, eschatological imagery, and an uncompromising moral urgency. As a royal councilor, he produced political treatises and legislation on behalf of Kings Æthelred and Cnut that articulate the most comprehensive vision of a Christian society to survive from Anglo-Saxon England. Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (“Sermon of the Wolf to the English”) remains among the most widely read pre-Conquest texts...
The writings of Archbishop Wulfstan of York (d. 1023) mark an artistic and conceptual highpoint of later Old English prose. As a homilist, he composed vibrant sermons characterized by vivid language, eschatological imagery, and an uncompromising moral urgency. As a royal councilor, he produced political treatises and legislation on behalf of Kings Æthelred and Cnut that articulate the most comprehensive vision of a Christian society to survive from Anglo-Saxon England. Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (“Sermon of the Wolf to the English”) remains among the most widely read pre-Conquest texts as both a standard assignment for beginning Old English students and an ongoing subject of scrutiny for advanced scholars. Likewise, the short chapters that make up the Institutes of Polity (the title is a modern editorial invention) together comprise the most elaborate treatise of political theory to be written in England before John of Salisbury’s Policraticus (c. 1155). Nonetheless, despite his contemporary importance, little is known of Wulfstan’s biography. His date of birth remains a mystery, as do his family, education, and early career. He enters the historical record with his election as Bishop of London in 996. Over the next six years, he acquired a reputation as a dynamic homilist on apocalyptic themes. In 1002, he was named Archbishop of York and Bishop of Worcester, and by 1005 he was serving as an advisor to King Æthelred. During this period, he began producing treatises on political theory and eventually drafting the legislation that circulated in the king’s name. Wulfstan’s influence grew over the next decade as his literary and legal output increased. With the fall of Æthelred and the rise of the Danish conqueror, Cnut, Wulfstan maintained his position at court and his role as primary author of royal legislation. He died in 1023. Following his death, Wulfstan’s writings continued to circulate, though often without his name attached. It was only in the mid-20th century that scholars came to recognize the full range of his achievements. The identification of Wulfstan’s corpus and recovery of his career thus serve as one of the leading achievements of modern Anglo-Saxon studies. In Wulfstan’s work, one finds both powerful prose and a compelling political imagination. No other figure from the early English Middle Ages can claim to have exercised so much influence in so many spheres or composed such a diverse and accomplished body of texts.
Article. 15277 words.
Subjects: Literary Studies (British and Irish)
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Home News Ocean City OKs Two Paths to Jump Start Bayside Dredging
Ocean City OKs Two Paths to Jump Start Bayside Dredging
A proposed temporary roadway would connect Roosevelt Boulevard in Ocean City (34th Street) with Site 83, the mound in the marshes where the city is permitted to deposit material dredged from the bottom of Ocean City’s lagoons and bayside channels.
City Council on Thursday (Dec. 3) unanimously approved two measures that could help restart Ocean City’s long-stalled efforts to dredge bayfront lagoons and channels that are too shallow for boat traffic at low tide.
Both measures address the same problem: Ocean City is willing to spend money to dredge the bay, but it has no place to put the material it dredges.
Council passed a resolution to spend $849,227 to build a temporary road across the marshes to help truck away material from one disposal site that is filled to capacity. Council also approved spending another $226,000 for an engineering company to design experimental plans to spray a thin layer of dredged material across a wide area of marshes.
The road construction contract goes to Command Co Inc. of Egg Harbor City to provide truck access to a “confined disposal facility” (Site 83) in the marshes near Roosevelt Boulevard (34th Street). Work on the road possibly could begin early in the new year.
Command Co Inc. was the lowest of nine bidders and any potential contract would be contingent on approval of a pending Army Corps of Engineers permit for the project. Clearing material from Site 83 would make room for new dredging projects to resume, because the site already is approved by environmental regulators.
Council awarded a design contract to ACT Engineering Inc. to draft a wetlands restoration plan that would take advantage of a $2.6 million grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to experiment with a new technique to “create and stabilize wetlands” — essentially to spread a thin layer of dredged material over a wide area of the marshes.
Dredging engineer Ram Mohan of Anchor QEA, LLC, an ACT Engineering subcontractor, told Ocean City residents in a presentation this summer that spraying a thin layer of material (6 to 12 inches) like rain across the marshes would increase the island’s ability to withstand storms and improve wildlife habitat at the same time.
Part of the firm’s work will be to look at historic maps and images of the marshes to determine what can be restored. Three potential areas include the area south of Site 83 (potentially providing a better barrier to flooding along Roosevelt Boulevard), an area east of the Ocean City Municipal Airport, and Garrett’s Island (where the Route 52 Welcome Center is located).
Plans would be the first step in a process subject to extensive environmental permitting studies, and on Thursday Councilman Mike DeVlieger asked for assurance that any potential work would not affect ecotourism in Ocean City. He acknowledged that any project involving wetlands would receive “ridiculous amounts” of oversight from regulators.
Mayor Jay Gillian said the planning process would make sure “we get our facts straight and know exactly what’s going out there.” But he said experts are confident that the process can be beneficial to both wetlands and wildlife.
“While expensive, it’s money well-spent,” DeVlieger said.
ALSO ON COUNCIL AGENDA
The dredging-related resolutions were part of a full council agenda that included the following actions:
$2.1 MILLION FOR ROADS: Council unanimously approved the first reading of a bond ordinance that authorizes the spending of $2.1 million ($1,995,000 of it borrowed) to continue the next phases of Ocean City’s ongoing plan for road and drainage improvements. Finance Director Frank Donato said most of the work will be between 14th and 16th Streets from West Avenue to the bay (including side streets). Utility companies are finishing work in the area, and paving could begin in late winter. Second reading of the ordinance is scheduled for Dec. 17.
SHEDS: City Council gave final approval to an ordinance that eliminates a duplicate ordinance governing sheds.
RENTAL UNIT FEES: City Council gave final approval to an ordinance eliminating mercantile license fees on units rented for more than 175 days. The fees will continue to exist for short-term rental units.
EXTRA COSTS FOR DREDGING PLAN: City Council approved a resolution that adds $190,750 to a $787,500 contract for ACT Engineering to provide a comprehensive strategy to dredge Ocean City’s bayfront from tip to tip.
EARLY MEETING ON DEC. 17: Council agreed to move the start time of its Dec. 17 meeting from 7 p.m. to 5 p.m. to avoid conflicts with various holiday celebrations.
CRS RATING: Ocean City property owners can expect some savings on their flood insurance policies this spring as the island has moved up a level in the Community Rating System that governs premiums, according to Business Administrator Jim Mallon.
Previous articleCouncil Honors American Legion for Excellence Award
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Paul McComas: Beginning Hooks
Member Registration (workshop) – $10.00
Nonmember Registration – $15.00
Significant discounts are available to members. Join today.
PLEASE NOTE: the main entrance to the Winnetka Community House (on Lincoln) is closed all week. There are entrances on either side of the building.
Stories in the Spotlight: In the beginnings …
The most vital and, often, most memorable pages of any narrative are the last ones—and the first. For purposes of reading, analysis, and recitation, the advantage of “the beginning” is that it stands alone, requiring no background or introduction. Author/actor/educator Paul McComas gives dramatic performances of especially compelling initial pages from fictional works (and one memoir) by a variety of authors, then explains how each one deftly “hooks” the reader—or listener—while also setting the stage for what's to follow.
Paul McComas is the author of two novels, Planet of the Dates and Unplugged; two short-story collections, Twenty Questions and Unforgettable: Harrowing Futures, Horrors, & (Dark) Humor; and the novella Fit for a Frankenstein. He’s also the editor of two anthologies, First Person Imperfect and Further Persons Imperfect. Paul co-authored the novel Logan’s Journey (slated for 2014 publication) with William F. Nolan, bestselling author of the SF classic Logan’s Run, and is co-authoring Exile on Poverty Row: The Life and Films of Edgar G. Ulmer for 2015 publication by an academic press.
His short narrative films and videos have garnered international, national, and regional prizes, been screened at festivals worldwide, and been shown on network, public, and cable TV. Since 1998, Paul has taught writing, literature, and film at numerous sites and at multiple levels, from adult-ed to Master’s programs, winning teaching awards from Northwestern and National-Louis universities. He has been a Visiting Artist at twenty universities, academies, and arts-centered high schools; he lectures about literature, film, and writing nationwide; and he has paneled at annual meetings of the the Association of Writers & Writing Programs and the National Poetry Foundation, among other organizations.
Paul has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Evanston Arts Council, Northwestern University, and Notre Dame University.
Members $10; Nonmembers welcome, $15
No manuscripts accepted for this session.
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Glory days relived
Mandi Torrez
If you could relive your youth for a mere $5, would you do it?
A few Northern Colorado baseball players shell out the bucks every year for a chance to become one of the more than 34,000 players across the country who can’t fight the itch that lures them back to the dug out.
Every Sunday from March to August, players 18 years and older lace up cleats and pull on caps to compete in leagues offered by the National Adult Baseball Association.
The few bucks cover the cost of a tryout for the Northern Colorado league that features eight teams in two divisions. Denver also has its own league of more than 70 teams. There 1,500 teams across the country in 85 cities playing at different levels in local leagues, national tournaments and even a World Championship Series. Most leagues also have an all-star game. The Northern Colorado league played its all-star game last month at Butch Butler Field.
Cities that have more players have several different levels for age and experience. Some levels require three to four years of college experience or even some professional experience, while the lowest level is for the every day recreational player.
“From guys who played Little League and didn’t get to play after that to players still trying to make it to the big leagues — we cater to everyone,” said Shane Fugita, president of the NABA.
The Northern Colorado league plays four nine-inning games each Sunday. Most games are played at Berthoud High School, but some have also been played at Fort Collins High. Each team gets about 20 games per season.
“The league is ideal for guys who are working a lot because it’s only one day a week,” said Tyler Thompson, manager of the Rattlers team. “I just like baseball. It’s a lot more fun for me than softball will ever be.”
The interest continues to grow as does the level of competition. The league could have fielded 14 teams this year, but the number of teams has stayed at eight since the league started six years ago.
And on each team are pitchers who consistently throw in the high 70s to low 80s.
“It’s getting more competitive every year,” said Jason McLaughlin, a Greeley middle school teacher and coach who plays for the Hammers. “People’s skills have gotten a lot better.”
Every team in the Northern Colorado league also has a distinct character and story.
Russ Shumacher, who plays for the Hammers, is a local celebrity. He is a four-time Jeopardy champion and a Ph. D. candidate at Colorado State University.
“He has an Einstein IQ. He can hit, he can throw and he can play musical instruments,” McLaughlin said. “He is the type of person who really makes you feel bad about yourself.”
Nathan Ell tried out for the league four years ago.
“I hadn’t played in five or six years and I hate softball,” said Ell, the manager of the Poudre Grays and former league president.
Ell might just be one of the guys, but he also is unique. Almost eight years ago, Ell’s left leg was amputated from the knee down. He plays with prosthesis.
“When he made the first cut at tryouts, the manager who drafted him didn’t even know,” said Ell’s mother, Marilyn Cowhick. “His big idea of a comeback was to play baseball again.”
That’s the idea for most of the players and why the league is a big hit in Colorado and across the country.
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Debates of April 4th, 2019
House of Commons Hansard #398 of the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was company.
Mirabel Expropriations
Paul-André Massé
Shootings in New Zealand
Shelter Movers
Special Assistant to Member of Parliament
LIUNA Union Member
InterCultural Online Health Network
Manitoba Court Challenge
Vaudreuil-Soulanges Wine Expo
Claude LeBlanc
Dutch Heritage Day
Manitoba Court ChallengeStatements By Members
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my neighbours to the east in Manitoba for joining the legal fight against the Liberal carbon tax.
Since day one, Saskatchewan has opposed this tax, which has increased the cost of gas, groceries, home heating and much more.
Manitoba had a plan, but no, it was not good enough for the current Prime Minister and the seven Liberal MPs from the province of Manitoba.
The carbon tax is not about the environment; it is a tax grab by a cash-strapped government. Otherwise, the Liberals would not have negotiated the massive exemptions for Canada's largest emitters, who will now be able to pollute for free while the rest of us have to pay for their mistakes. The Liberal government is imposing punishing taxes on Canadians while calling it an environmental plan.
The EnvironmentStatements By Members
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Mr. Speaker, I rise to highlight the importance of budget 2019 for my riding of Mississauga—Lakeshore.
As residents of a waterfront community, many of my constituents have shared with me their views on the importance of safeguarding the environment for future generations by making greener choices. Our government is taking real action by putting a price on pollution and putting money back into the pockets of hard-working Canadians through the climate action incentive rebates. Our plan encourages businesses to innovate more and pollute less.
Budget 2019 invests in measures that will make it easier and more affordable for Canadians to contribute to a clean economy. They include incentives for zero-emission vehicles, creating a realistic option for more of us by reducing the costs of ownership by up to $5,000; lower energy costs through programs like the new home retrofit program; and investments in infrastructure to build cleaner and healthier communities.
Budget 2019 is a real plan to fight climate change, grow our economy and help make life more affordable for Canadian families.
Claude LeBlancStatements By Members
Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to Claude LeBlanc, a great man from Sherbrooke who passed away recently. He was taken from us far too soon.
Mr. LeBlanc spent his whole life, right up to the very end, working to improve the quality of life of the people of Sherbrooke.
One of the projects that was very important to him in recent years was the installation of automated external defibrillators. It is estimated that 85% of cardiac arrests occur in places outside of hospital and that nearly 30% of those who are saved are under the age of 40. We also know that, if defibrillation is performed on a person within four minutes of going into cardiac arrest, that person has a 75% chance of survival.
There is no doubt that Claude's hard work and dedication saved the lives of many people in the Eastern Townships. He was very convincing. However, his mission is not complete. We must carry on because there is still a lot of work to be done.
As recently as two months ago, Claude and his partner, Dr. Wayne Smith, came to me with the idea of a law that would require the installation of defibrillators in federal buildings and federally regulated businesses.
I am therefore asking everyone here to consider this idea and to continue the work that was started by Mr. LeBlanc. That is what he would ask us to do if he were still with us today.
Thank you, Claude.
Carbon PricingStatements By Members
Diane Finley Conservative Haldimand—Norfolk, ON
Mr. Speaker, while Canadians struggle to make ends meet, the government chooses to make life even harder and more expensive.
On April 1, the Liberal carbon tax came into effect, making everyday essentials such as gas, home heating and groceries more expensive for all Canadians. This carbon tax will hit Canada's most vulnerable the hardest. Seniors on fixed incomes will see what little resources they have chipped away by higher costs for essentials, with many unable to afford the new prices.
With the increased cost of home heating and groceries, young families will struggle to save for their children's futures. Our farming communities, which rely on transportation and heavy machinery to harvest and get their product to Canadian dinner tables, will have to pay more and receive less for providing this vital service.
Only a Conservative government will help make life more affordable for all Canadians by scrapping the carbon tax.
North Atlantic Treaty OrganizationStatements By Members
April 4th, 2019 / 2:15 p.m.
Mr. Speaker, today marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
In the post-World War II wasteland of Europe, the continent's weak democracies faced an existentialist threat from a military superpower with an expansionist Communist ideology and more battle-hardened divisions than all of western Europe combined.
In the postwar period, Louis St. Laurent and Lester B. Pearson determinedly advocated for a defensive transatlantic security organization which would ally countries with shared democratic values. In April of 1949, 12 countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty.
With the fall of the Iron Curtain, NATO established the principle of an expanding shield behind which nascent democracies would find security. Today, 29 countries are NATO members and 21 aspire to membership.
May NATO's defensive shield continue to expand, and in the words of Pearson, “promote the economic well-being of peoples to achieve social justice...on the side of peace and progress.”
JusticeOral Questions
Candice Bergen Conservative Portage—Lisgar, MB
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has been caught again, trying to deceive. On February 7, when he said the initial Globe and Mail story was false, he was not telling the truth.
Now we know that when he said the former attorney general never raised her valid concerns with him, he was misleading Canadians. Just yesterday, he accidentally admitted that on September 17, the former attorney general told him very directly to back off.
The Prime Minister cannot seem to keep his story straight. Is that because it is just not true?
Mr. Speaker, we have been clear from the beginning that Canadians deserve to know and that is exactly why the Prime Minister provided an unprecedented waiver. He waived solicitor-client privilege, as well as cabinet confidence.
The reason why the facts are all now on the table and why the public is able to see for itself is because the Prime Minister took that step. The committee confirmed through testimony that the rule of law was intact in Canada and that the rule of law was followed.
The Prime Minister recognizes that we can always strengthen our institutions and that is why he has taken additional measures.
Mr. Speaker, on February 15, the Prime Minister said that if anyone thought he was doing anything wrong, then it was their responsibility to come forward, but he said that no one did.
Yesterday he admitted that this just was not true. The former attorney general warned him several times, including on September 17, not to politically interfere in the SNC prosecution, but he refused to listen. He fired her, and he continues to spread falsehoods.
Why will the Prime Minister not simply tell the truth about his interference in a criminal prosecution?
Mr. Speaker, what is clear is that there is an ongoing court case on this matter. We know that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner is currently investigating this matter. We know that the justice committee spent over five weeks on this matter.
We believe that Canadians deserve to know and that is exactly why the Prime Minister waived solicitor-client privilege, as well as cabinet confidence. It is important to note that this is an unprecedented waiver. It has never been done in the history of our country. The Prime Minister recognizes that Canadians deserve to know, and that is exactly why all facts are now public. They are on the table.
Mr. Speaker, let us review the facts. The Prime Minister tried to politically interfere in a criminal prosecution. His former attorney general said no, so he fired her.
The truth comes out and he denies everything. The Prime Minister then shuts down the investigation and refuses the full waiver. A tape proves that the former attorney general has been telling the truth. The Prime Minister is furious, so he kicks the two women out of his caucus and runs a smear campaign against both of them.
It is time to end the cover-up. When will the Prime Minister tell the truth?
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the facts.
Justice committee members, members from all recognized parties in the House who sit on the justice committee, came together and set parameters when it came to these allegations to ensure that Canadians could hear about those allegations directly from witnesses. The Prime Minister waived solicitor-client privilege, as well as cabinet confidence.
Even though at every step of the way the Conservatives, the opposition frankly, believed that these meetings would not take place, that witnesses would not appear and that cabinet confidence would not be waived, actually the committee met, witnesses appeared and confidence was waived, so Canadians themselves could see and hear.
Alain Rayes Conservative Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has been misleading the House for more than eight weeks now. On February 7, he said that claims in this interference scandal involving him and his office were false. He denied everything and then changed his story every week. Yesterday in the House his memory magically came back to him and he ended up admitting that the former attorney general's concerns had been brought to his attention.
Can the Prime Minister tell us why he has such a hard time remembering the truth?
Mr. Speaker, we know that Canadians need to be able to hear it for themselves. That is why the Prime Minister waived solicitor-client privilege as well as cabinet confidence.
We know that members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights did their job. They decided to hear from witnesses. The witnesses came to testify. At every stage, the Conservatives said that these meetings would not happen, that the witnesses were not allowed to come, but that was not the case. Members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights called the witnesses. They did—
The hon. member for Richmond—Arthabaska.
Mr. Speaker, Canadians simply want the truth.
La Presse requested the Michael Wernick documents on November 1 and December 15. The department normally responds to these requests within 30 days. The newspaper was told that the documents would not be ready for 240 days. Coincidentally, that would be four weeks after the election.
If the Prime Minister has nothing to hide, will he release the documents to the media and to Canadians, yes or no?
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister waived solicitor-client privilege and cabinet confidence so that Canadians could hear the truth for themselves. Canadians can now see the facts, since they are now out in the open. The member himself said that the media asked a question and had received a response. He knows very well that they will receive the requested documents.
Jagmeet Singh NDP Burnaby South, BC
Mr. Speaker, today, the member for Markham—Stouffville reminded us that this was about the fundamental principle of politicians interfering with the justice system. She said, “I chose the truth. I chose...principles that are so important to the future of our country. That’s more important than my political career.”
Could the Minister of Justice assure the House that he will not overrule the decision of the public prosecutions for the sake of a wealthy corporation?
LaSalle—Émard—Verdun Québec
David Lametti LiberalMinister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
Mr. Speaker, as I have said in the House on a number of occasions, we are still in a period in which an appeal of the judicial review decision is possible. Therefore, I will make no pronouncement on the situation with respect to a deferred prosecution agreement. Anything that I might say might be interpreted and have an impact on litigation.
Mr. Speaker, the former president of the Treasury Board chose principles, truth and to do what is right for Canadians. The Prime Minister chose his rich friends and his own political interests.
Will the Liberals commit to respecting the fundamental principle of not interfering in criminal prosecutions?
Mr. Speaker, as I have said in this House on a number of occasions, in particular when answering the questions of my Bloc Québécois friends, we are still in a period in which an appeal of the judicial review decision is possible. Therefore, I will make no pronouncement on this situation because it may have an impact on litigation.
PharmacareOral Questions
Mr. Speaker, Quebeckers led the way when they created a hybrid public-private pharmacare plan, but the Liberals and the Conservatives abandoned the Quebec government. Due to Ottawa's failure to take action, 10% of Quebeckers do not buy their medications because they are too expensive.
Will the Prime Minister undertake to help Quebec put in place a public and universal pharmacare plan?
Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe New Brunswick
Ginette Petitpas Taylor LiberalMinister of Health
Mr. Speaker, we recognize that Canadians are proud of their health system, but that we can do better. That is why this past year we created the advisory council on the implementation of national pharmacare. We asked the council to have a national conversation with Canadians. I received the interim report a month ago and I look forward to receiving the final report at the end of June.
Mr. Speaker, Canadians do not need any more studies; they need action. Too many Canadians are struggling to afford their much-needed medicine. I spoke to one young person who was more worried about his parents' spending on his medication than his own health. Canadians are asking for help.
The New Democrats' medication for all plan would put hundreds of dollars back into the pockets of families and ensure that affordable medication would be within reach of Canadians.
Will the Prime Minister finally stand up to large drug and insurance companies and ensure that this program is enacted?
Mr. Speaker, Canadians are proud of their publicly funded health care system, one that is based on need and not on their ability to pay. However, we certainly recognize that we can do better.
That is why, last year, we launched the advisory council on the implementation of a national pharmacare program. Unlike the NDP, we choose to want to have a plan as we move forward with this very important initiative, which is very important for all Canadians. I received the council's interim report last month. I look forward to receiving its final report later on in June this year.
I would ask the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby not to be speaking when someone else has the floor. As much as we love to hear his voice, we would like to hear it when he has the floor.
The hon. member for Lakeland.
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Seasons Greetings from our Chair
Wishing you a relaxing festive season as we reflect on 2014 and look towards the new year.
For those who attended This Other Eden you will, I am sure, agree with me that it was an exceptional production&\
“. The comments from the audience and cast surveys were overwhelmingly positive. We also gained some valuable suggestions from these surveys about how to improve our performance. We have taken note of these. In TakeNote you will find the details of the production team’s success in the Dunedin Theatre Awards.
You will also find more detail about our major production for 2015. The Magic Flute is one of Mozart’s most loved operas and is one that is new to Opera Otago’s repertoire. We look forward to a sparkling production of this popular work. Make sure you organise your year to include it in your plans!
While an artistic success, our production this year severely stretched the finances of the Company. To this end we have established a number of fundraising efforts to be carried out during 2015. Your support of these would be most welcome. The first is a raffle, which will be on sale in the New Year. Other aspects of the fundraisers will be announced in due course.
In conclusion I would just like to record my thanks to our faithful supporters, to all who were involved in the production of This Other Eden, and to my Executive members for their support and hard work over the year.
Best Wishes for a relaxing and happy Festive Season.
Murray Davidson
TakeNote
Executive, Raffle, The Magic Flute, This Other Eden
Artistic Success: This Other Eden wins at Arts Awards
Opera Otago Raffle
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in Africa, Blogs, Development, Economics, finance, Inequality, Kenya, Politics, Tanzania, Unions
Capital and inequality
Joseph Joyce, professor of economics at Wellesley College wrote and interesting piece to day on capital liberalization and inequality.
I’m glad to see that so much attention is being fawned on Piketty’s most excellent book, “Capital in the 21sr Century.” It’s sure to go down as a classic in the economics literature, but the debate and discussion surrounding the book couldn’t come at a better time.
I don’t think it’s an accident that Piketty’s book, would top the NYT best seller list just a week after appearing, that a sitting President of the US would mention that inequality is one of the most important issues of our time, or that Christine LaGarde, head of the IMF would make a case that we need to address inequality at a global level.
They (Florence Jaumotte, Subir Lall and Chris Papageorgiou) analyzed the effect of financial globalization and trade as well as technology on income inequality in 51 countries over the period of 1981 to 2003. They reported that technology played a larger role in increasing inequality than globalization. But while trade actually reduced inequality through increased exports of agricultural goods from developing countries, foreign direct investment played a different role. Inward FDI (like technology) favored workers with relatively higher skills and education, while outward FDI reduced employment in lower skill sectors. Consequently, the authors concluded, while financial deepening has been associated with higher growth, a disproportionate share of the gains may go to those who already have higher incomes.
This is a scenario we’re all mostly familiar with, though the broad effects are still debatable. Increasing investment by giants like the US in overseas manufacturing push down wages on domestic unskilled labor, but it’s hard to say whether this had a major effect on overall employment. Unemployment remained steady even after Clinton signed NAFTA, and continues to remain well under European levels today, though the lowest level of workers feel the worst pain. I’m not sure if I can really advocate for protectionist measures to keep capital at home or dissuade foreign investment on principle alone, but it is true that the worst effect of foreign competition has been the erosion of labor’s political power.
Jayati Ghosh of Jawaharlal Nehru University of New Delhi has examined the role of capital inflows in developing countries. She maintains that the inflows appreciate the real exchange rate and encourage investment in non-tradable sectors and domestic asset markets. The resulting rise in asset prices pulls funds away from the financing of agriculture and small firms, hurting farmers and workers in traditional sectors. Eventually, the asset bubbles break, and the poor are usually those most vulnerable to the ensuing crisis.
Well, this is somewhat more interesting. Foreign investment in developing countries appreciates the exchange rate, leading domestic investors to put their money into, say, real estate assets. This is certainly the case all over Africa. Land and building developments are occurring at a breakneck pace, with the hopes that expensive properties will be bought up by foreign companies and individuals. It’s certainly the case that no common African could ever afford some of these places (or would even want to buy them if they could). Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Luanda, Angola are all in the middle of a real estate bubble. The problem, of course, is that domestic investors are hoping to make a quick buck, rather than attempting to create long term, profitable industries. No wonder Africa imports the lion’s share of it’s manufactured goods. No local will invest in the infrastructure to create it locally since urban real estate is so absurdly profitable right now. This, of course, means that money flows directly into the pockets of the urban elite and then sent back out to bank accounts and retailers in France and England, further entrenching the poorest of the poor.
Without the development of local industries, domestic economies can’t function and opportunities for revenue collections are missed. and countries like Tanzania and Kenya, for example, will continue to be beggar economies which depend on the good graces of the international community to support domestic social programs.
Tags: capital liberalization, financial globalization, income inequality, inequality, investment
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Broken Social Scene
Forgiveness Rock Record
by Ryan Dombal
With production assistance from John McEntire, the Canadian indie rock kingpins return, tighter and more polished than ever.
Forgiveness is not a sentiment often associated with rock music. Anger, despair, infatuation, sure. But forgiveness is more complicated, and tougher to fit into a four-minute song. Broken Social Scene know all about heartbreak-- they've spent most of the last decade crafting songs about it with almost unparalleled zeal. Their story is filled with scurrilous encounters, backstabbings, and break-ups on par with most 70s arena-rockers, and they've crashed and rebuilt so many times that it's nearly impossible to keep track of who was where at any given moment. But they've also used that flexibility to their advantage: Their epochal 2002 breakout You Forgot It In People was the joyous sound of friends banding together to boost each other up, while 2005's Broken Social Scene was the dizzying sound of friends fizzing out into solo endeavors and outside pursuits.
Now they're back, and they're forgiving. Who, exactly? Each other, loves, bad decisions, humanity at large, worse decisions, the past, the future, culture, corporations, art, you, me, maybe even George W. Bush. (Well, maybe not him.) And while a 59-minute absolution session sounds excessive for even the most devout fans, Broken Social Scene aren't just throwing out hail marys here. Because forgiveness is hard, especially for a group this grand and this intertwined for this long. The album lets bygones go while acknowledging the pain and discipline involved, and does so while keeping with the band's indie-mixtape rep. There's a song that sounds like Pavement, one that sounds like the Sea and Cake (featuring Sea and Cake singer Sam Prekop), another like a Broadway adaptation of Children of Men, a weightless ballad that may double as an ode to masturbation, and a song that's basically five minutes of atmospheric pop perfection. Their ambition is intact.
Forgiveness Rock Record's thematic bent is mature, and that sense of gravity is embedded into the music, too. Working with band hero, Tortoise/Sea and Cake drummer, and post-rock mastermind John McEntire for the first time, Broken Social Scene made sure to have their shit together. Considering the co-producer's experimental bona fides, it's surprising that this is the most song-based album the band has ever made-- every track but one contains vocals, and a couple seem to be filled with more words than the entirety of You Forgot It In People. Unlike their last album's sometimes indulgent cut-and-paste sonic collages, Forgiveness has distinct targets and leaves little room for wayward meanders.
The band's newfound tightness results in a few of the most chart-friendly songs in BSS history, although as usual, each seems to come with a built-in caveat to prevent the potential of radio play: the sweat-soaked "World Sick", with its massive crescendos building to one visceral, heart-pounding release after another, is nearly seven minutes long with extended instrumental intros and outros. "Texico Bitches", despite its misleading breezy accompaniment, is an increasingly topical indictment of big oil that repeats the word "bitches" 12 times. And the vocals on the beautiful, synth-laden "All to All" are serviceably performed by relative newcomer Lisa Lobsinger, where Leslie Feist's stronger, more possessed delivery may have pushed it into another weight class entirely. (Feist does show up on Forgiveness, but only for background vocals.)
As an alt-hippie with obsessions for Dinosaur Jr., Jeff Buckley, and Ennio Morricone, BSS main face Kevin Drew led the burgeoning band to somewhere completely fresh with You Forgot It In People, an album that read like a non-ironic, indie-rock Odelay for the early 2000s. For the most part, Drew and company are referencing the same beloved bands on Forgiveness, with one key addition: Broken Social Scene themselves. There are now marks that listeners expect them to hit, and they're nailed with focus and precision: the peppy, horn-laden track from Apostle of Hustle's Andrew Whiteman ("Art House Director"), the back-of-the-bus acoustic session ("Highway Slipper Jam"), the immense instrumental to end all immense instrumentals ("Meet Me in the Basement"). All of those tracks excellently fill their respective niches, but the fact that there are niches at all adds a bittersweet tinge to a band that once sounded like everything else and nothing else.
Which leads us to the indiscretion summary "Sentimental X's". It checks off another BSS box-- the subtly devastating Emily Haines-sung heart-tugger. "Off and on is what we want," sings Haines, narrating the band's gift-and-curse plight, "A friend of a friend you used to call/ Or a friend of a friend you used/ You used to call." Which is what Broken Social Scene is: a mess of friends using friends, loving friends, calling friends, wanting to call friends, and then not calling friends anymore. The connections are transitory but also indestructible. Ultimately, "Sentimental X's" is a love song; there's lots of forgiveness, but nobody feels sorry.
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Tag: glenn tilbrook
Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, Six Of The Best
Six Of The Best – Glenn Tilbrook
June 18, 2019 June 18, 2019 Craig McAllister
Six Of The Best is a semi-regular feature that pokes, prods and persuades your favourite bands, bards and barometers of hip opinion to tell us six of the best tracks they’ve ever heard. The tracks could be mainstream million-sellers or they could be obfuscatingly obscure, it doesn’t matter. The only criteria set is that, aye, they must be Six of the Best. Think of it like a mini, groovier version of Desert Island Discs…
Number 31 in a series:
Glenn Tilbrook is one half of the song-writing duo that’s provided Squeeze with the tuneage and melody required to bother both the charts and comfortably-sized theatres with pleasing regularity for the past 4 decades. Alongside Chris Difford, the Lennon to his McCartney, Glenn is responsible for writing some of the greatest literate, socially-aware, and slightly saucy kitchen sink dramas this side of Ray Davis. At their peak they were untouchable; Slap And Tickle, Annie Get Your Gun, Cool For Cats, Take Me, I’m Yours, Pulling Mussels From the Shell, Tempted….. Tilbrook is responsible for a back catalogue of songs that many of his peers would kill for.
Amongst those many masterpieces, Up The Junction must surely rank as the greatest of them all. Married to a melody that McCartney himself might be prepared to do serious time for, it outlines the ups and downs of a doomed relationship, handily drawing parallels with the late 60s film of the same name.
Up The Junction is carried by a signature riff that whenever heard nowadays, clatters me between the lugs with such Proustian force that I’m instantly transported back in time to a Thursday night in May, 1979, sat watching on the carpet with a bowl of Rice Krispies as the band play it on Top Of The Pops. What struck me most at the time was not the number of words in the song (unusual in an era of short, sharp new wave belters) nor the instantly hummable tune, but the fact that the drummer was out front and centre stage. Watching recently on one of those BBC4 repeats that brighten up Friday night telly, it was apparent that the band had swapped instruments for their big appearance. Jools Holland manhandles the bass while Difford does his best Gary Numan impression behind the keyboard. And out front is indeed our Glenn, pretending he’s the drummer. At 9 years old, I had no idea. Nor why should I?
Recently, Tillbrook has hooked up with the Trussell Trust, the organisation responsible for helping to stock food banks the length and breadth of the UK. On his current solo tour, Glenn is selling unique merchandise (an EP, t-shirt, mug) and donating all profits to the Trust. He also has food drop-off points at his shows where socially-conscious fans can leave a donation that’ll find its way back into the local community.
“It is shameful that in the 21st century there are people that can’t afford to put food on the table. Anyone, from any walk of life, can fall upon dire times, and I hope that by doing this tour it will remind people that there is a very real need. Most of us can do something to help – be it giving some food or a little money – and I hope people coming to the shows are inspired to donate.”
A few days ago, Glenn’s tour stopped off in my hometown of Irvine and I blagged myself a quick pre-show interview. In my head I’d an idea that I’d ask him some typical ‘Six of the Best‘ fayre – the first records that resonated with the young Glenn, the song he wishes he’d written, a track that everyone should have in their collection….(if you’re a regular reader you’ll know how these (very popular) articles pan out)… and I’d go home and whip up a pretty groovy article referencing the aforementioned Lennon & McCartney, Ray Davis and perhaps Django Reinhardt or other such left-field must-hears. In reality though, our conversation never quite made it that far.
Lounging in his early 00s Airbus, parallel-parked at Irvine harbour with the windows trained on the Isle of Arran just across the water and with joss sticks gently smouldering in the corner, it certainly set a scene. A pile of charity shop vinyl lay propped against a wood panelled wall unit, on top of which sat a turntable, buried underneath LP sleeves and random tour ephemera. Greeting me with a hearty hello and a friendly handshake, I was initially disarmed by how much Glenn unfortunately looked and sounded a bit like Piers Morgan’s younger brother. We’d met 5 years ago, but the ubiquitous Morgan wasn’t quite as omnipresent back then. Not sure how you address that, Glenn, but surely that’s another reason for ridding the world of Morgan? There’s room for just the one matey bloke with short-cropped curls and a Thames Estuary accent, and Glenn’s politics are far more acceptable also.
“There was always music in our house,” begins Glenn. “My parents were jazz fans; Ella Fitzgerald, Sinatra, Lena Horne. Their records sound-tracked my earliest memories. My brother was 7 years older than me and he introduced me to stuff like The Beatles, The Who and The Yardbirds, all the beat groups. I listened intently to the pirate radio stations, Radios Caroline and London, mainly. When I was 6 I learnt to play the piano and a year later I’d picked up the guitar. Most kids go through the tennis racquet stage but me, I went straight to the real thing. Music was my thing. I knew from a very early age that this was something I wanted to do all the time.
The first band I was obsessed with was The Monkees. Micky Dolenz has one of the great rock and roll voices, truly, but he never, ever got the recognition. My brother would say, “Oh, they’re just a made-up band, they’re not ‘real'” but to me, they were the most important band in my life. Listen to Last Train To Clarksville and tell me that’s not a brilliant pop record.
The Monkees – Last Train To Clarksville
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/1-02-last-train-to-clarksville.mp3
“It’s interesting , y’know, how I discovered certain music through my brother and how, now, my own children are discovering that same music through me. Not only that, though, I’m discovering brilliant music through them. This generation of kids, with their access to streaming and downloading have the whole world at their fingertips. They aren’t bound by barrier or genre. A good tune’s a good tune, y’know?
Have you heard Question Time by Dave? It’s a beautifully judged, extremely well-written modern protest song. My son Leon turned me onto it.”
Unsurprisingly for a writer obsessed with wordplay and stories, Tillbrook is a big fan of Kate Tempest. “‘Everybody Down’, her debut album, floored me on first listen. Floored me! It’s terrific. She’s smart with words, the way she plays with poetry. She’s definitely a big influence on how I write my own songs.”
“I listen to a lot of Radio 3 when I’m traveling between shows. And Spotify playlists, although the analytics that put together the recommended tracks, they’re usually way off the mark. Let me see…. (grabs iPad, opens it up…)… yes, an eclectic bunch; I love Bjork. her debut album is still astonishing. Destiny’s Child. Villagers. The Emotions. Lots of soul, actually.” A sneak peak confirms Betty Wright, James Brown and Stevie Wonder.
Returning to my parents’ music, I still love jazz. Listen to this…”
“I saw Les Paul once. He played a residency in a little club in Greenwich Village. I was in New York that often that I got to know about it and one night, I made it down, and there he was.”
Glenn’s voice tails off with misty-eyed reflection as the skipping rhythm and scratchy twang fills the space. By now his tour manager has signalled that my time is up. I leave as the last, long and languid notes from Paul and Atkins fade away, not quite armed with the subject matter I’d come hoping for, but all the richer for it. Later, in the tiny but perfect 100-seater Harbour Arts Centre, Glenn runs through Squeeze’s greatest hits and more, sometimes on acoustic but always electric.
Glenn Tilbrook will tour as part of Squeeze in the Autumn. I dare say I’ll see you in Glasgow.
Tagged glenn tilbrook, squeeze3 Comments
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Narcissistic and egotistical politicians
Politicians in Pakistan! Is their repute here pitiable? If yes, then in all impartiality, this is largely their own fault. What ratings, reviews and numbers at the box office are to film stars; attention, like-ability and votes are to politicians, unlike people with regular jobs. Obviously, it would be imprudent to assume every politician is like this.
But what, you may ask, prompted me to postulate this issue? It was in fact a recent interaction with a female member of the National Assembly (MNA). We had invited her to join a focus group discussion on ‘gender focused economic reforms’. When we called her up a day before to confirm her participation, she confronted me with a condescending rude attitude.
I was appalled because a) she felt insulted for not being a panelist b) the participants of the gathering were not on her ‘level’ c) she felt that not enough research had been carried out on ‘her’ personal profile, and d) she did not have time to attend such unimportant and insignificant events.
What do you make of such an attitude by people who are supposed to engage with people at the grass roots and initiate legislation on issues that impinge on the lives of their voters?
Agreed that effectively running a country of tens of millions of people — all of whom have varying needs and demands — is an incredibly thorny job. But aren’t politicians meant to grapple with these issues? Are they up to this task? Do they have enough commitment and understanding of their criticality to grassroots-level consultations?
While there are exceptions, what seem to drive our politicians is a lust for power, prestige, status, and the propensity to display authority. These “objects of admiration” not only gratify their need for self-aggrandisement by feeding their oversized ego. They also provide them with compelling evidence to confirm their sense of superiority to others — probably their most coveted need of all. Do our office holders uphold the underpinning belief that those involved in politics are to be highly-principled individuals who are selflessly committed to the greater good of society? We all know the answer is a clear ‘no’.
Instead of engaging in dialogue, cooperation and mutual respect, they seem to practise blind opposition and conduct themselves with arrogance.
In retrospect, how have we been performing under the leadership of Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari? Compare these men to the likes of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. It sure feels like comparing apples to oranges. No amount of money will ever be able to buy character, class, charm, integrity, humility and enlightenment.
The most important task for the politician, the Greeks believed, is to be morally upright; one has to be primarily a civically engaged citizen always willing to place the interest of the larger community above self-interest.
This encompasses creating and passing enduring laws, upholding positive social norms, and solidifying institutions by making affairs transparent (including a system of moral education) for the citizens. There are just so many variables that need to be considered; religious and cultural concerns, military science, household management, economics, local political units, and last but not the least, individual citizens. I wonder how many people, who don’t speak up, have been at the receiving end of these negative and brazen claims. This sense of superiority has to be shunned and politeness, positivity and humility has to be cultivated. Political competence only belongs to responsible people who think long and hard before deciding the course of action that would best serve community. Leadership has no title and leaders are surely not as negative and entitled as yourself.
The incident has made me confident that the reason Pakistan’s masses are malnourished, unemployed and poor is because we have leaders who are incapable, insensitive and self-absorbed. Maybe our bureaucrats and technocrats, who fall into this ego-bubble, need to go through customised vocational training and capacity building to learn the philosophy and leadership as well as diplomacy and communication 101 perhaps?
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/ Modified jan 28, 2014 4:25 p.m.
UA's RNA Research Helping Scientists with Cancer Diagnosis
New developments in molecular biology make it possible to measure messenger RNA in single cells. by Georgia Davis TWEET SHARE
(VIDEO: AZPM)
Scientists at the University of Arizona have sequenced the entire messenger RNA of a brain cell.
This research, which was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has exciting implications for cancer research, and for studies of organ functioning and disease.
Dr. David Galbraith, a member of the UA research team, said DNA is contained within the nucleus of a cell. DNA transcribes, or reads out, messages onto the messenger RNA. The messenger RNA, then, "Leaves the nucleus and goes out into the cell where it it used to construct parts of the cell," he explained.
With new developments in molecular biology, scientists have been able to measure the messenger RNA in single cells. This is the first time, Galbraith said, that anyone has been able to go inside the nucleus of the cell to measure the messenger RNA, and furthermore, to determine its type.
Galbraith, who is jointly appointed to the BIO5 Institute and the UA's School of Plant Sciences, called this work "extremely unique."
In addition to measuring and identifying the messenger RNA, Galbraith and research team member Roger Lasken with the J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego, Calif. were able to introduce a florescent dye into the cell. Tom Doetschman, with the BIO5 Institute and the UA Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, is using this later technique to advance his own work on pancreatic cancer.
Doetschman said it can be years between a cell turning cancerous and a person developing pancreatic cancer. Thus, it is important to understand what is happening in those early stages if one is to be able to understand and prevent pancreatic cancer.
"In a tumor environment...you have many, many kinds of cells contributing to the formation, but the actual cell that is going to become the cancer cell, it is very difficult to isolate that cell from all of the other different kinds of cells," he said. "Making those cells fluorescent makes them easy to identify, which is what Galbraith and Lasken managed to do.
That technology, Galbraith said, has great potential for cancer research.
"If you have normal tissue and you are trying to find the individual cells within which the changes are occurring," he said. "And so these technologies that we have put together enable us to pick out the individual cells at the point they are changing."
Furthermore, with this new technique, researchers may be able to determine which, if any, genes are turned on at the moment a cell becomes cancerous. This has broad implications for cancer research and for furthering personalized medicine, in which genes are used to determine a person's potential for disease.
MORE: Health & Medicine, News, Technology, Tucson, University of Arizona, Higher Education
Native American Cancer Prevention Program Gets $13M Grant Disease Drives Shrimp Prices; UA Researcher Seeks Solution Report: Arizona’s Cancer Rate Below US Average
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Westerhoff Family Foundation Concert
The Westerhoff Concert Returns
Since 2005 Helga and Gary Westerhoff have brought classical concerts to Rangeley featuring professional musicians that are faculty members at their Westerhoff School of Music & Art in Metuchen, NJ.(www.westerhoffschoolofmusic.com). All school faculty members are professional musicians with degrees from music conservatories. The concert will be presented on Thursday, August 1 at the Church of the Good Shepherd on Main Street in Rangeley and will begin at 7 PM.
This year’s concert will be very special. Under the direction of Music Director, David Iskowitz, the concert will feature compositions for two pianos on two separate grand pianos. To assure the highest quality of sound, these two pianos will be delivered to Rangeley from Portland, Maine on the day of the concert. The scheduled performers will be David Iskowitz, John Maxham, Linh Tran and Nikita Mamedov.
The concert is expected to include The Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 as well as other best loved music from the classical repertoire.
The concert is sponsored by the Rangeley Friends of the Arts and the Westerhoff Family Foundation, Inc. A Reception to meet the performers will follow the concert in the Undercroft. Admission is free. The RFA will gladly accept donations to further fund their programs.
David Iskowitz, pianist, is Music Director and senior faculty member of the Westerhoff School of Music & Art. He is also an adjunct faculty member and staff accompanist at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. Mr. Iskowitz performs often in the New York metropolitan area, both as soloist and chamber musician. He is a graduate of the Peabody Institute of the John Hopkins University.
John Maxham, baritone, has sung with the Santa Fe Opera, the San Francisco Opera, and with opera companies in Europe and Taiwan. He was a leading baritone soloist in the Landesbuehnen, Sachsen, in Germany. He has a love for the art song, and is an avid recitalist. The San Francisco Chronicle described his voice as “encompassing about every style and color possible to his range – fine, well-trained, with intelligence to spare.” Mr. Maxham has most recently collaborated with the Sinfonietta Nova as writer, host, and performer. He teaches voice at the Westerhoff School and is co-director of the Joy of Singing, LLC.
Linh Tran, pianist, was born in Nha Trang, Vietnam and started piano lessons at the age of five. She completed her Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance at Biola University’s Conservatory of Music in Southern California, and her Master of Music in Piano Performance at the Mason Gross School of Arts at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Her primary teachers include Jennie Wong, Phillip Young, Li-Shan Hung, and Paul Hoffmann, and she has participated in master classes with Menahem Pressler of the Beaux Arts Trio, Bela Siki, Nelita True, Ann Schein, Dorian Leljak and the Adaskin Trio. She is a member of the piano faculty at the Westerhoff School of Music & Art. Linh is passionate about playing chamber music, as well as teaching, and desires to instill the same love for music in her students.
Nikita Mamedov, pianist, received his undergraduate degree from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey where he majored in piano performance and studied with Ingrid Clarfield. Prior to coming to the United States, Mr. Mamedov graduated from the Rubenstein School of Music in Russia. He has received prizes in the New Jersey Music Teachers Association’s Young Musicians Competition, and Penn State’s Marion Garcia Piano Competition. He has performed at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York and at other venues in the New Jersey metropolitan area.
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Ex-Prisoner: The Potential of Prisoners & the Impact of Bob Avakian
September 29, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Revcom.us recently posted an interview with a former prisoner who, through contact with Revolution newspaper, the writings of Bob Avakian (BA), and literature of the Revolutionary Communist Party, decided that being an emancipator of humanity was what his life was going to be about. The following are two short clips from the interview, which appeared in three parts (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). To prisoners: If you would like a printout of the whole interview, write to Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund, 1321 N. Milwaukee Ave #407, Chicago, IL 60622.
"If we're really going to make revolution we gotta get into BA"
Revolution: You became a revolutionary in prison doing an 11-year sentence. Can you talk about the process you went through of going from a gang mentality to a different way of thinking?
X: It was a lot of struggle, struggle with myself... it was a process of struggle that happened as I read more. I was stuck in the cell and would just be reading out of boredom. You just pick up a book and start reading shit. And then you think about it. You think about the role you’re playing and all this shit.
I started getting into radical literature and it appealed to me. Because on one level, I always hated cops. I hated the cops cause I saw their hypocrisy. So I had this dislike of authorities, dislike of the government. I saw it as bullshit. You look at TV and you see these fools that come up and these fake-ass politicians and the way they would talk about the neighborhoods, you know, like what they were doing there. The fucking pigs would get up there and you recognize their hypocrisy when they would talk about “oh, we’re trying to serve these people, protect these people and these fucking thugs are the problem.” Well they don’t say it that way, they polish up the way they speak about people, I guess they go through some kind of training to talk about this shit. And then you hear these politicians, “such an upstanding officer of the law” and all this shit. And you feel like everybody is against you, the pigs are against you, these fucking reporters interviewing them are against you, the politicians are against you and you start to feel like the whole world is against you. So you want to fuck up, you just feel like fucking up.
But you’re also conscious of some things and then you start reading things. Like a lot of the radical literature I read was coming from people who sent literature to prisoners, the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund (PRLF) being my favorite one. They would send things and they would talk about prisoners. They didn’t think we were the scum of the earth. Realizing there were people out there who saw prisoners as a potential positive force had a big impact on me. And they actually had a better opinion of me than I did of myself. I really did think I was a piece of shit sometimes. “I’m no good. I do all this horrible shit.” And you embrace it as a way to cope with all of it. Then there’s people who don’t see me as an irredeemable monster, and they were trying to fight something that I was against, that I didn’t like from the time I was a child—I didn’t like the government, the system. I didn’t like none of that shit. And so it appealed to me and I started reading more and more and as I read more and more, I became more and more conscious.
Political resistance appealed to me. But it wasn’t life changing in the way revolution was. It changed the way I thought about a lot of things. I was struggling with the way I was feeling but I didn’t see a reason for me to be different. I would kinda lie to myself, that we could make revolution some day, one day. Because I had that sense that we’re not going to change shit unless we make a revolution. We need a revolution to change all this shit that these people are talking about. In a lot of this radical literature, they weren’t talking about revolution, not in a substantive way. They were just talking about gradual change or resistance—people uniting against this or that particular crime that stems from the system. They were saying we could change things, but weren’t really talking fundamentally about how. How would we overthrow the fucking government and what are we going to put in its place? What do we need to do to get to that point? Nobody was saying that. Nobody... all this shit was frustrating me so I didn’t see the possibility of it. Until my friend sent me the PRLF address in a kite. [Kites are small notes passed amongst prisoners.]
To be clear, I had read Marx, Lenin, Mao, Engels and they were clearly revolutionary—they were serious about making a REAL revolution. But when I read all these “modern day revolutionaries” I felt like they were watering down the content. But when I started reading Revolution newspaper, they were talking about actually making revolution in a serious way. “This is our strategy, this what we need to do. We need to build a movement. But it has to be a movement FOR revolution.” A lot of people talk about movement building but they didn’t talk about movement building for what? It was always real vague. Or some people talk about socialism but they didn’t say how we were going to get to socialism. Revolution newspaper was different. BA’s works were different. I started reading all this and then I was like “Oh shit!” it really inspired me, that was life changing. I started thinking about it more seriously and about all the things I had thought about before, then I started taking a serious look at what I was going to make my life about.
One thing I knew I wasn’t going to do—I wasn’t going to conform. Even when I was less conscious, I knew I wasn’t going to conform, that just wasn’t an option. But when I got into BA and Revolution newspaper then “I saw the light” but I also asked questions. I didn’t take anything up without questioning it. At the beginning, I wrote in with a lot of questions. And my questions were answered through reading more and more of BA’s works.
Communism definitely appealed to me. There were other people who called themselves communists but their line was bullshit. It was based on a lot of wishful thinking about resistance in the Third World spontaneously developing into the kind of consciousness needed for a revolution. On the flip side, they looked at difficulties of making revolution in the U.S. and concluded that you couldn’t make a revolution here. That wasn’t life changing. Nothing in there made me want to make my life about revolution, in the way they viewed it. If you’re going to be into wishful thinking or just... I don’t want to be part of no culture of resistance. “Oh I lived my life and I resisted so I could sleep better at night.” Fuck that! If I’m a change my life it’s gotta be because I think we’re actually gonna change shit. I’m actually gonna make contributions, actually changing it not just to feel good about myself. I wanna make a fucking revolution.
The more shit I read and the more I compared and contrasted to BA, I came to see, “Okay, if we’re really going to make revolution we gotta get into BA.” When I first read the paper and it talked about “we have this leader BA, we have this newspaper, we have this Party with these principles we could build.” It didn’t really get to me at that moment, it didn’t really hit me but the more I got into it, the more I read, at a certain point, it did hit me. One day I was just thinking, I was like “fuck! It’s such a precious thing.” I remember reading BA saying the Party is a precious thing, and I’m like “yeah, okay.” But I didn’t really get it until I thought about it. “Man, we do have this Party and all these people acting in support of this Party, to build this Party but for the purpose of making revolution. And there’s a Party leading this.” And I thought this is very powerful and then I looked into the strategy. That’s one of the things that really got to me, when I read “On the Strategy for Revolution.” The more I thought about it, the more I could see that this strategy conformed to objective reality.
Prisoners Can Play an Important Role in the Revolution
Revolution: What role would you say... in talking to people who are reading this in prison now, what role do you think prisoners can and need to play in the revolution?
X: They need to take up revolution and communism. They need to take these goals up. And they have to figure out what they can do wherever they're at to fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution—and do whatever they can from within the confines of prison. Because they're not helpless. They can still contribute. They can get into BA and help get others into BA, to get people to wrangle with all these big questions.
Another way prisoners can make an important contribution is by writing letters to the PRLF [Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund] and Revolution newspaper.
While I was in prison, I opened up the paper one time and saw an excerpt from one of my letters on a sign that people were using on the street. I was like, "What the???" I started realizing that there's still contributions you could make just by writing. I was able to speak to a whole section of people through the pages of Revolution—not just my celly or the guy in the cell next to mine. That's very important because of the back and forth between outside and inside the prison walls. I was someone about whom the system would've said, "You can't teach this dumb-ass anything," or "You would have to water down the content for him to understand." But I did get a meaningful education in prison, because I was learning fundamental things about how the world works, why things are the way they are, and what we could do to change it. Then through writing in to Revolution, I was able to challenge others with what I had come to understand.
I was surprised to see one of my letters being taken out to challenge these youth who are caught up in the things that most of these prisoners were caught up in before they came to prison. A lot more of that needs to be done to reach out to those youth before they get caught up in this system's game and their life is snatched away from them by these pigs and the system they represent. Prisoners have a very important role to play and an obligation to speak to these youth—we know what they're going through and we know where they're heading. But if you've gotten into revolution, you also know their lives could be about something radically different—they could be the gravediggers of this system and emancipators of humanity.
In addition, if people from all walks of life see prisoners stepping forward, that could be very inspiring—if even prisoners with their very limited means are finding ways to contribute to this, then why can't I? It can change people's thinking—the people that this system is always telling you are monsters are actually capable of tremendous love for humanity. And it is this system that is monstrous.
There's another level, too, where prisoners should be raising their questions and differences—to share questions, which others might have who don’t write into Revolution, but which everyone can learn from. Also, raising their questions can provide real insights into significant contradictions they might be dealing with or thinking about that the movement for revolution may not be aware of. Or even if you're wrong about something that you raise and someone is writing back to you and answering your question, it makes the person answering have to work to further develop the line, and this can contribute to all kinds of breakthroughs. The deeper our understanding is, the better equipped we are to make revolution. So posing those questions is important, as they're wrangling with all this... and make those questions known so we can get to work on answering them and helping raise that level of consciousness for the movement as a whole.
If more prisoners recognize this and find ways to be writing and engaging the line, you could have a very positive impact.
Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution
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Ray White wins Major Network of the Year at the 2016 Real Estate Business awards
We are proud to announce that Ray White has taken out the top industry accolade for Major Network of the Year at the 2016 Real Estate Business awards held at The Star in Sydney on Thursday 16 June. The awards celebrate the success of the previous 12 months and cements our status as the industry’s market leader.
Recognising the industry’s best talent, the Real Estate Business Awards are in their fourth year and are open to every professional and real estate group in the industry. The Major Network of the Year award is the night’s highest accolade and is decided by a panel of industry judges.
Dan White accepted the award on the night on behalf of the entire group and said it was great to be recognised as the best. “We’re a fourth generation business and our company is blessed to work with quality people who have been with us for a number of years – our network is like family to us.”
“This award was not possible without the support of our members commitment to remaining market leaders,” he said.
Brian White was proud of the group’s win and said the recognition was tied to the family values which have been instrumental in creating a business of attraction.
“We are proudly a family owned and led business, made up of 1,000 family businesses across Australasia. This award is a direct reflection of the power of family businesses,” he said.
The award showcases the significant initiatives the group has integrated into the business in 2015 to remain the industry’s market leader.
“This award belongs to each member of our group. Thank you to all Ray White members who have made the award possible,” said Dan.
Dan White – Ray White wins Network of the Year speech
source: www.raywhite.com
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Ball State's Entertainment News Source
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‘Unfriended’ Review
Directed by Levan Gabriadze | Starring Shelley Hennig, Renee Olstead & Will Peltz
DESPITE THE DOWNFALLS, THE FILM’S UNIQUE STYLE SHINES BRIGHT ENOUGH TO WARRANT A WATCH.
By Logan Sowash
About two weeks ago, I saw the phenomenal film It Follows. The film was a refreshing horror experience that I was glad to catch as soon as I did. I’m a giant fan of horror, but unfortunately I haven’t found any other modern horror film to be anything outstanding. So when I heard about the local, advanced screening of Unfriended, I decided to give it a shot and see the film with a couple of friends. After 82 minutes in the theater, my reaction to the film was far from expected.
The story of Unfriended is simple. A year after high school student Laura Barnes committed suicide, a group of friends chat with each other on Skype. As they talk, an unidentified party joins the chat and threatens to kill the group unless someone unveils who uploaded the video that ultimately led to Laura’s death. As the situation intensifies and the group dynamic changes, they try to fulfill the request, which reveals the possibility that the unknown person is the ghost of Laura Barnes. Overall, the story is nothing new, but the pacing is perfect and reveals enough secrets to keep the viewer wanting more until the end.
The biggest selling point for this film is the point of view. The entire film takes place on a laptop screen and follows the main character’s habits, such as Skype chats and Spotify playlists. The film never breaks from the screen, completely immersing the audience into the protagonist’s plight to solve the mysteries surrounding the unknown threat. This point of view helps show the character’s thoughts and personality without needing any help from dialogue. This example of “show, don’t tell” advances the film in the best way possible.The primary downfall is that, despite its unique viewpoint, the film doesn’t tread new ground in any other department. Like I said before, the story is cliché and includes characters that aren’t very compelling. Each character fits into a horror film stereotype, making any personal connections useless considering the limited, on-screen life spans. I understand that many do not go to horror films to feel attached to expendable characters, but after seeing It Follows, the benefits of adding more than just likeability to your characters become harder to ignore. Thankfully, Unfriended handles these clichés well enough to make it more enjoyable than films like Ouija or the most recent Paranormal Activity.
In the end, Unfriended is an entertaining popcorn film. Despite the downfalls, the film’s unique style shines bright enough to warrant the film a watch. It’s the perfect last-minute Netflix pick on a Friday night. If you’re interested in seeing it in theaters, I’d say give it a shot. While the film doesn’t hold a candle to It Follows, it’s definitely a nice change of pace to see a mainstream horror film with a good amount of effort put into it.
Unique and immersive concept
Wonderful pacing
Genuinely creepy and intense moments
Cliché story
Lack of interesting characters
Jump scares
reeldealbsu April 17, 2015 September 2, 2015 featured, Logan Sowash
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